The Post-Uruguay Round era has seen a proliferation of regional preferential trade agreements (PTAs) as well as progressive multilateral trade liberalization initiatives. This has stimulated theoretical discussion on whether the policy of pursuing PTAs will have a malign or a benign impact on multilateralism. In the former case, proliferation of PT As may increase protection in global trade due to trade diversion effects, thereby creating impediments to multilateral freeing of global trade. In the latter case, the expansion of PTA membership could ultimately lead to non-discriminatory global free trade. At the core of this discussion is the question of how to explain the preference for PTA membership. While some economists view the expansion of PTA membership as exogenously determined, participants of the Fourth Annual Workshop of the Network EU-LDC Trade and Capital Relations also considered endogenous factors explaining increased PTA membership. This book offers a closer look at the motives of policy makers in both developed and developing countries to still adhere to PTAs, notwithstanding the theoretical superiority of multilateralism, and addresses the question of how to bring order into the world trading system. These issues are dealt with in 9 chapters by scholars from both the EU and LDCs. Each paper is discussed in terms of its policy relevance by a policy maker as well as by an academic specialized in the field.
The major problems the world faces have increased since the turn of the millennium. Recurrent storms on the financial markets have ravaged many countries, poverty is still widespread, notwithstanding decades of massive development aid, the environment remains in acute jeopardy and the major world institutions have often reached an impasse in attempting to combat these difficulties. The issues ask for rapid and consistent action by policy makers but the interests of international organizations, such as the WTO, World Bank and Kyoto protocol, have become too diversified to come to multilateral agreements setting uniform rules and asking for strict compliance with these rules. Alternative solutions are sought and development in the future is likely to be characterized by fuzzy and complex interactions between flexible groups of actors seeking agreements on the solutions for the most pressing new problems. Progress will become rather unpredictable and will depend on time, place and subject specific cases as well as convergence of interests. This need not be only negative. Flexible solutions have the advantage that they can be easily adapted in case the conditions change. In this new book, the follow up to his Global Economic Institutions, Willem Molle maps out the unfolding of this process.
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