Trade Policy Flexibility and Enforcement in the WTO: A Law and Economics Analysis: 1 (Cambridge International Trade and Economic Law, Series Number 1)
Cambridge University Press
Edition: Illustrated, 8/13/2009
EAN 9780521761208, ISBN10: 0521761204
Hardcover, 380 pages, 22.9 x 15.2 x 2.2 cm
Language: English
Originally published in English
The World Trade Organization (WTO) is an incomplete contract among sovereign countries. Trade policy flexibility mechanisms are designed to deal with contractual gaps, which are the inevitable consequence of this contractual incompleteness. Trade policy flexibility mechanisms are backed up by enforcement instruments which allow for punishment of illegal extra-contractual conduct. This book offers a legal and economic analysis of contractual escape and punishment in the WTO. It assesses the interrelation between contractual incompleteness, trade policy flexibility mechanisms, contract enforcement, and WTO Members' willingness to co-operate and to commit to trade liberalization. It contributes to the body of WTO scholarship by providing a systematic assessment of the weaknesses of the current regime of escape and punishment in the WTO, and the systemic implications that these weaknesses have for the international trading system, before offering a reform agenda that is concrete, politically realistic, and systemically viable.
1. Introduction
trade policy flexibility in the WTO - vice or virtue?
Part I. An Introduction to Incomplete Contracting
2. Complete contracts, and the contracting ideal
3. Incomplete contracting, and the essence of flexibility
Part II. Theorizing about the WTO as an Incomplete Contract
4. Adding context
the WTO as an incomplete contract
5. Analyzing the system of non-performance in the WTO
Part III. Flexibility and Enforcement in the WTO
Towards an Agenda for Reform
6. Theorizing about the 'WTO' as an efficient 'breach' contract
7. Towards an efficient 'breach' contract
an agenda for reform.
'Do WTO agreements allow for 'efficient breach?' What purpose is served by WTO instruments regarding flexibility and escape? Are these instruments structured as well as possible? These are the central themes that Schropp examines in this important study. Scholars and policymakers alike will find his analysis valuable and illuminating.' Alan O. Sykes, Stanford University