How can small and young agencies cope and target cross border cartels? This paper explores the related challenges and puts forward a pragmatic tool to break down international cooperation barriers. Given the efforts of the ICN in seeking ways and means to operationalise cross-border cooperation in investigation of cases as well as those of selected UNCTAD member States in trying to trigger the international measures section of the UN Set on Competition, this brief contribution attempts to strengthen the ICN framework for non-confidential information sharing between competition agencies by incorporating specific key elements that are provided by the section F.4 related to voluntary consultations so as to address effectively the harmful effects of international cartels in emerging markets.
The summer 2016 saw some of the key emerging economies change their position on services negotiations at the WTO, which may prove instrumental in bringing services back to the WTO, via The Trade in services Agreement (TiSA). While TiSA parties have discussed critical mass based multilateralization for a while, another approach may prove to be more viable - "incrementalism" and "quasi-multilateralization". This hybrid legal form of negotiated outcomes would entail a long-term, multilayered approach integrating TiSA into the GATS/WTO framework at a time that may see TiSA’s silver lining materialize. TiSA could help re-invigorate services negotiations at the WTO and conceptualize legal forms that embody coexistence and transmission between frameworks.
This article explores the intersections between the global tax reform launched by the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) and the Group of 20 (G20) to tackle base erosion and profit shifting (BEPS) on the one hand, and international rules on trade in services, mostly – the General Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS) under the World Trade Organization (WTO) on the other hand. The GATS entered into force in 1995 to expand trade in services. It covers all measures affecting trade in services, including direct taxation. While the GATS leaves policy space for WTO Members to adopt measures to ensure the effective imposition of direct taxes and to conclude agreements among themselves to avoid double taxation, its negotiators could hardly have envisaged the depth and breadth of the current BEPS reform package, as shown by a recent WTO dispute. This paper provides a systematic analysis of concurrent application of the GATS and the BEPS Package and recommends that WTO Members take actions to avoid potential conflict in applying both sets of rules.
In this paper we assess the quality and coherence of the use of economics in dispute settlement in two fields of international economic law: international trade and international investment law. We argue that four economic concepts are frequently used and/or of critical importance for both international trade and investment law. Those concepts are the concepts of “likeness”/”like circumstances”, causality, “necessity” and damage calculation. We highlight differences in the way in which economics has been applied to assess these concepts and argue that coherence in the use of economics can be increased by reassessing the way in which economics is brought into submissions by parties and the processes that are relevant for adjudicators when interpreting economic evidence. We argue that a common set of guidelines for submitting quantitative evidence in WTO or investor-state dispute settlement proceedings can contribute greatly to setting quality standards and to creating trust as to the reliability and acceptability of economic evidence submitted to adjudicators. In an appendix to this paper we make suggestions as to what such guidelines could look like.
This paper aims to provide the first evidence concerning the relationship between time ans risk preferences and illegal migration in an African context. Based upon our theoretical model and using a unique data set on potential migrants collected in urban Senegal, we evaluate a measure of time and risk preferences through the individual's intertemporal discount rate and coefficient of absolute risk aversion. Remarkably, our results show that these individual preferences matter in the willingness to migrate illegally and to pay a smuggler.
We revisit the simultaneous equations model of rebellion, mobilization, grievances and repression proposed by Gurr and Moore (1997). Our main contribution is to clarify and improve on the underlying identification strategy and to emphasize the role played by the institutional environment. Instrumental variables estimates for post-colonial societies reveal that the strength of the state, as proxied empirically by an index of bureaucratic quality, exerts a strong preventive effect on rebellion. On the other hand, working institutions also influence the likelihood of rebellion indirectly, through mobilization. As such, the total net effect of state capacity on rebellion is ambiguous.
The cross-border flows of goods, investment, services, know-how and people associated with international production networks–call it ‘supply-chain trade’ for short–has transformed the world. The WTO has not kept pace. This paper argues that adapting world trade governance to the realities of supply-chain trade will require a new organization–a WTO 2.0 as it were. Reasoning on the optimal nature of the new organization is based on the nature of supply-chain trade, the nature of the disciplines that underpin it, and the nature of the gains from cooperation.
