Special and Differential Treatment of Developing Countries in the WTO: Moving Forward After Cancún

Hoekman, Bernard M.; Michalopoulos, Constantine; Winter, Lieven De

doi:10.1111/j.0378-5920.2004.00610.x

Cited by 77 publications

(26 citation statements)

References 27 publications

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“…As a result, akin to the situation under the UNFCCC, there has been a discussion about how to make the differential treatment more dynamic and how to establish differentiation categories and graduation rules to allow this flexibility (see e.g. Hoekman et al, 2004;Hoekman and Özden, 2006;Kasteng et al, 2004;Page and Kleen, 2005).…”

Section: Differential Treatment Of Parties To Multilateral Environmenmentioning

confidence: 99%

Constructed peer groups and path dependence in international organizations: The case of the international climate change negotiations

Castro

Hörnlein

Michaelowa

2014

Global Environmental Change

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Section: Differential Treatment Of Parties To Multilateral Environmenmentioning

confidence: 99%

Constructed peer groups and path dependence in international organizations: The case of the international climate change negotiations

Castro

Hörnlein

Michaelowa

2014

Global Environmental Change

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“…Special and Differential Treatment provisions/Generalized System of Preferences, where developed countries may offer unilateral tariff reductions to less developed countries, may be one further ingredient to diminish power asymmetries, see, for example, Hoekman et al. (), Özden and Reinhardt () and Bagwell and Staiger ().…”

Section: Reciprocity and Mitigation Of Power Asymmetriesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Reciprocal Tariff Reductions Under Asymmetric Bargaining Power

Freund

2017

World Economy

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arise from trade concessions are balanced (volume approach). See Figure 1 for an overview of the different concepts of reciprocity.History has shown that there has been indeed substantial discretion on how exactly to reciprocate. In the Kennedy Round and in the subsequent Tokyo Round , reciprocity was achieved by applying different types of tariff reduction formulas, see, for example Finger (2002) and Panagariya (2002). In the Uruguay Round (1986-94), however, no specific formula was in place but it could be observed that reciprocity was conducted in a way that is consistent with the volume approach, consult Shirono (2004) and Karacaovali and Limão (2008) for empirical evidence. In the Doha Development Round, initiated in 2001, where the focus is on the needs of developing countries, the focal point for trade liberalisation is again based on tariff formula approaches, see Hoekman and Nicita (2010).Given the different possible ways to achieve reciprocity and the concerns that developing countries could be disadvantaged due to their relative lack of negotiation power, there is a need for a systematic comparison of the different approaches. 2 Therefore, I analyse how the gains from freer trade are distributed across trading partners for different degrees of power asymmetry and for different kinds of reciprocation.This study is most closely related to Epifani and Vitaloni (2006, p. 437) who have shown that for the volume-based approach, the weaker country is worse off than under the unconstrained power-based approach. This is puzzling since the volume approach may 'perversely exacerbate, rather than mitigate, power asymmetries among countries, as argued instead by Bagwell and Staiger' as Epifani and Vitaloni put it. Whereas this is an important result it is by no means clear what the distributional effects of the other category of constrained negotiations, the tariff approach, might be. Therefore, the effectiveness of the different types of constraints that have been observed in past negotiation rounds in achieving the goal of a fairer distribution of the gains from trade is investigated. For this purpose, I will extend the pure exchange general equilibrium model of Epifani and Vitaloni (2006) which in turn builds on Kennan and Riezman (1988) to analyse the effect of two different tariff adjustment formulas, a linear formula and the Swiss formula. The model allows for a straightforward introduction of the tariff approach. Furthermore, it is able to capture some facets of the actual imbalances in trade negotiations which are based on variations in development status. This is because in an endowment framework differences in the quantity of produced goods across countries can be attributed to differences in factor endowments and/or technology. Since variations in development can be explained to a large extent by technological disparities, this could easily be implemented in the model by assigning relatively small endowments for developing countries. To my knowledge, this is also the first attempt to investigate the ba...

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“…The literature that exclusively relies on domestic producers' market access ambitions and/or states' political aspirations in world politics as explanatory factors for trade preferences at least implicitly assumes away this insight. It may have gone some way in providing a framework for assessing the global trade politics under the relatively isolated system of the GATT, which initially focused on trade in goods among a relatively small club of mainly industrialised countries (Hoekman et al 2004). It is at a loss, however, to conceptualise the broader controversies that have evolved around an expanding trade agenda since the 1980s (Williams 2004;von Bülow 2010).…”

Section: Legal Opportunity In Trade Negotiationsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Legal Opportunity in Trade Negotiations: International Law, Opportunity Structures and the Political Economy of Trade Agreements

Trommer

2013

New Political Economy

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In 2009, the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) challenged the European Union (EU)'s interpretation of Article XXIV GATT in bilateral trade talks. Based on a legal analysis that West African activists initially provided, ECOWAS established that the clause allowed for more flexibility on market opening than the EU expected. Since then, market access constitutes one unresolved issue slowing down negotiations between the trade power Europe and trade-and aid-dependent ECOWAS. The example challenges the political economy literature dealing with trade policy-making on at least two accounts, namely the role of typically sidelines actors such as poor countries and transnational activists; and the role of the law in mediating strategic and discursive aspects of trade political processes. To assess the evidence and its theoretical implications, I combine the analytical concept of political opportunity structure developed in the transnational studies literature with pluralist approaches to law. I argue that trade political actors can become aware of the pathways to influence that legal uncertainty opens, in particular under conditions of multilevel governance where national, regional and international legal orders are intertwined. Overall, the way in which the law mediates ideas and interests thus deserves scrutiny in political economy approaches to trade.

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Special and Differential Treatment of Developing Countries in the WTO: Moving Forward After Cancún

Cited by 77 publications

References 27 publications

Constructed peer groups and path dependence in international organizations: The case of the international climate change negotiations

Constructed peer groups and path dependence in international organizations: The case of the international climate change negotiations

Reciprocal Tariff Reductions Under Asymmetric Bargaining Power

Legal Opportunity in Trade Negotiations: International Law, Opportunity Structures and the Political Economy of Trade Agreements

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