With World Trade Organization negotiations stagnant, and preferential trade agreements (PTAs) rapidly proliferating, international trade relations are shifting markedly toward bilateralism. The resulting fragmentation in the international trade regime poses serious risks to economic welfare and the coherence of international trade law. Similar challenges have been faced in the international investment regime, which is comprised of a highly fragmented network of bilateral investment treaties (BITs). However, scholars have identified several mechanisms that promote harmonization in the international investment regime. Among these are cross-treaty interpretation in dispute settlement and the inclusion of most-favoured nation (MFN) clauses in BITs. This paper assesses the scope for these two mechanisms to emerge in the international trade regime by comparing the legal framework, institutional dynamics, and political economy of the trade and investment regimes. The analysis suggests that cross-treaty interpretation is likely to emerge in the trade regime as PTA dispute settlement activity increases and that greater use of MFN clauses in PTAs is a viable possibility. These developments would mitigate the effects of fragmentation and advance harmonization in the international trade regime.

The Aid for Trade Initiative needs to be revamped. This article describes the challenges the Initiative faces and describes the pros and cons of possible reforms. The Aid for Trade Initiative succeeded in mobilizing quickly a large amount of financial resources. However, because the Doha Round talks stalled, the aid mobilized could not support the implementation of a multilateral agreement. Instead, it was spent on various projects, some of them not clearly related to trade. This affected developing countries confidence in the Initiative. To make matters worse, in the midst of a fiscal crisis that threatens development budgets, the Initiative had difficulties showing convincing results. In order to preserve resource mobilization, the WTO is expanding the scope of the Initiative to new areas only remotely related to trade and the trade and development nexus. This is unlikely to build confidence. The WTO should rather narrow the scope of the Initiative in order to make it more focused and efficient.

Accession to the World Trade Organization (WTO) is unlike accession to other global organizations. It is extremely demanding on applicant countries, time consuming and essentially power- rather than rule-based. This article argues that existing WTO members select themselves into the Working Party of applicant countries, the body which determines the timing and conditions of accession, in order to have the option to strategically delay membership by the applicant and/or extract concessions from it. Existing members will select themselves into a specific Working Party if their own trade interests are strongly affected, which will be the case if the existing member's bilateral trade with the applicant country forms a large share of its income, unless both countries already have a preferential trade agreement (PTA) between them. Trade interests are also strongly affected if the existing member competes with the applicant in terms of export product and market structure. Conversely, where both member and applicant have more PTAs with third countries of large economic size in common, potential accession will affect the member's trade interests less. An empirical analysis of Working Party membership since 1968 estimates to what extent these three different facets of trade interests are substantively important determinants of Working Party composition.

This paper reviews the extent of reductions in tariffs on environmental goods (EGs) by country participation in the negotiations mandated by a Doha Ministerial Decision in November 2001. Symptomatic of the cleavages across countries throughout the Round, little progress was achieved during the negotiations in defining an approach to a multilateral reduction in protection of EGs. Conflicting interests and differing perceptions of the benefits from increased trade in EGs was reflected in the different approaches proposed by members (request and offer, integrated project, list approach, hybrid approach), and for the few countries (13) that adopted a list approach, there was little overlap across submissions. For all income groups, on average, EGs are less protected than other goods and countries reduced protection by about 50% from initial levels in 1996 leaving little room for further exchange of market access. Difficulties in applying the two complementary conceptions of EGs: (i) ‘goods for environmental management’, and (ii) ‘environmentally preferable products' are reviewed and mentioned as reasons for the lack of progress during the negotiations. Inspection of the submission lists against a ‘core list’ of 26 EGs drawn up by the WTO shows that this ‘core list’ was mostly made up of products in which developed countries had a comparative advantage, and that countries that submitted lists generally avoided including on their lists the most highly protected goods.

We present a new dataset of international trade costs in services sectors. Using a theory-based methodology combined with data on domestic shipments and cross-border trade, we find that trade costs in services are much higher than in goods sectors: a multiple of two to three times in many cases. Trade costs in services have remained relatively steady over the last ten years, whereas trade costs in goods have fallen overall at an impressive rate. We show that even in a regional grouping that has done much to promote a single market in services–the EU–there remains considerable heterogeneity in trade costs across countries. Our findings generally suggest an important role for future policy reforms to reduce the regulatory burdens facing services sectors and facilitate trade in services.