Trade and Investment Rule-making

Edited by Stephen Woolcock

Trade and Investment Rule-making: The Role of Regional and Bilateral Agreements

Trade and Investment Rule-making
Edited by Stephen Woolcock

ISBN 92-808-1132-0
ISBN 978-92-808-1132-2
320 pages; paper; US$36.00
November 2006

Regional trade agreements are playing a greater role in shaping trade and investment rules around the world. To date the study of preferential agreements has focused on their impact on tariff preferences, but as tariffs are reduced rule-making becomes more important in trade and investment. This book addresses the role of regional and bilateral agreements in rule-making; provides an analytical framework for assessing the impact of regional and other preferential agreements on rule-making; and illustrates the role of regional agreements in a multi-level process of rule-making.

Seven detailed case studies show that regional agreements can make a positive contribution to the evolution of predictable trade and investment rules, but much depends on the kind of rules they promote. To date regional rule-making has gone hand-in-hand with the evolution of multilateral rules, but recent developments give some pause for thought. It is important to understand more fully the interaction between the regional and other levels of rule-making, if the positive aspects are to be furthered and negative aspects contained.

Editor

Stephen Woolcock is a lecturer in international relations at the London School of Economics and associate research fellow at UNU-CRIS in Bruges, Belgium.

Contents Overview

Introduction: The interaction between levels of rule-making in international trade and investment
Rule-making in agricultural trade: RTAs and the multilateral trading system
The case of sanitary and phytosanitary measures
Preferential rules of origin: Models and levels of rule-making
The interaction between levels of rule-making in public procurement
Assessing the interaction between levels of rule-making: Trade in telecommunications services
The international regulation of IPRs in a TRIPs and TRIPs-plus world
International investment rules
Conclusions