IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/mie/wpaper/614.html

Free Trade Agreements and Governance of the Global Trading System

Author

Listed:
  • Andrew G. Brown

    (Amherst, MA)

  • Robert M. Stern

    (University of Michigan)

Abstract

This paper explores how far free trade agreements (FTAs) have strengthened or weakened global governance of the trading system. We open with an analysis of the altered political and economic context within which countries have come, in recent years, to assign a new importance to regional and bilateral trade agreements in their trade policies. We then consider each of the main provisions included in FTAs and comment on how these may separately affect the management of trade relations. We conclude with some observations of the broader trends affecting global governance that are associated with the spread of trade agreements as a whole.

Suggested Citation

  • Andrew G. Brown & Robert M. Stern, 2011. "Free Trade Agreements and Governance of the Global Trading System," Working Papers 614, Research Seminar in International Economics, University of Michigan.
    • Handle: RePEc:mie:wpaper:614
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.fordschool.umich.edu/rsie/workingpapers/Papers601-625/r614.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Teh, Robert & Prusa, Thomas J. & Budetta, Michele, 2007. "Trade remedy provisions in regional trade agreements," WTO Staff Working Papers ERSD-2007-03, World Trade Organization (WTO), Economic Research and Statistics Division.
    2. Richard E. Baldwin, 2011. "Multilateralising Regionalism: Spaghetti Bowls as Building Blocks on the Path to Global Free Trade," Chapters, in: Miroslav N. Jovanović (ed.), International Handbook on the Economics of Integration, Volume I, chapter 2, Edward Elgar Publishing.
    3. Paul Brenton & Miriam Manchin, 2014. "Making EU Trade Agreements Work: The Role of Rules of Origin," World Scientific Book Chapters, in: INTERNATIONAL TRADE, DISTRIBUTION AND DEVELOPMENT Empirical Studies of Trade Policies, chapter 14, pages 299-313, World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd..
    4. Andrew G. Brown & Robert M. Stern, 2009. "Concepts of Fairness in the Global Trading System," World Scientific Book Chapters, in: Globalization And International Trade Policies, chapter 5, pages 109-149, World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd..
    5. John Whalley, 2008. "Recent Regional Agreements: Why So Many, Why So Much Variance in Form, Why Coming So Fast, and Where Are They Headed?," The World Economy, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 31(4), pages 517-532, April.
    6. repec:wbk:wbpubs:2329 is not listed on IDEAS
    7. Michael G. Plummer, 2007. "‘Best Practices’ in Regional Trading Agreements: An Application to Asia," The World Economy, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 30(12), pages 1771-1796, December.
    8. Bernard Hoekman, 2008. "The General Agreement on Trade in Services: Doomed to Fail? Does it Matter?," Journal of Industry, Competition and Trade, Springer, vol. 8(3), pages 295-318, December.
    9. repec:wbk:wbpubs:14783 is not listed on IDEAS
    10. Brown, Andrew G. & Stern, Robert M., 2008. "What are the issues in using trade agreements to improve international labor standards?," World Trade Review, Cambridge University Press, vol. 7(2), pages 331-357, April.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Matthias Helble & Zulfiqar Ali & Jera Lego, 2018. "A Comparison of Global Governance Across Sectors: Global Health, Trade, and Multilateral Development Finance," ADBI Working Papers 806, Asian Development Bank Institute.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Patrick Low, 2014. "Preferentialism in Trade Relations: Challenges for the World Trade Organization," ADBI Working Papers 478, Asian Development Bank Institute.
    2. Kawai, Masahiro & Wignaraja, Ganeshan, 2011. "Asian FTAs: Trends, prospects and challenges," Journal of Asian Economics, Elsevier, vol. 22(1), pages 1-22, February.
    3. Masahiro Kawai, 2009. "The Asian “Noodle Bowl”:Is It Serious for Business?," Working Papers id:1936, eSocialSciences.
    4. Andrew G. Brown & Robert M. Stern, 2010. "Fairness in the WTO Trading System," Working Papers 612, Research Seminar in International Economics, University of Michigan.
    5. Olivier CADOT & Lili Yan ING, 2014. "How Restrictive Are ASEAN's RoO?," Working Papers DP-2014-18, Economic Research Institute for ASEAN and East Asia (ERIA).
    6. Olivier Cadot & Lili Yan Ing, 2016. "How Restrictive Are ASEAN's Rules of Origin?," Asian Economic Papers, MIT Press, vol. 15(3), pages 115-134, Fall.
    7. Jayant Menon, 2009. "Dealing with the Proliferation of Bilateral Free Trade Agreements," The World Economy, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 32(10), pages 1381-1407, October.
    8. Masahiro Kawai & Ganeshan Wignaraja, 2014. "Trade Policy and Growth in Asia," ADBI Working Papers 495, Asian Development Bank Institute.
    9. Innwon Park & Soonchan Park, 2011. "Best practices for regional trade agreements," Review of World Economics (Weltwirtschaftliches Archiv), Springer;Institut für Weltwirtschaft (Kiel Institute for the World Economy), vol. 147(2), pages 249-268, June.
    10. Rachel McCulloch, 2010. "The International Trading System and Its Future," Working Papers 08, Brandeis University, Department of Economics and International Business School.
    11. Park, Innwon & Park, Soonchan, 2009. "Consolidation and Harmonization of Regional Trade Agreements (RTAs): A Path Toward Global Free Trade," MPRA Paper 14217, University Library of Munich, Germany, revised 23 Mar 2009.
    12. Joseph Francois & Bernard Hoekman, 2010. "Services Trade and Policy," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 48(3), pages 642-692, September.
    13. Ganeshan Wignaraja, 2013. "Regional Trade Agreements and Enterprises in Southeast Asia," Trade Working Papers 23718, East Asian Bureau of Economic Research.
    14. Fiorini, Matteo; Lebrand, Mathilde, 2016. "The Political Economy of Services Trade Agreements," Economics Working Papers ECO2016/05, European University Institute.
    15. Onder, Harun, 2012. "Trade and Climate Change: An Analytical Review of Key Issues," World Bank - Economic Premise, The World Bank, issue 86, pages 1-8, August.
    16. Zakaria Sorgho, 2016. "RTAs' Proliferation and Trade-diversion Effects: Evidence of the ‘Spaghetti Bowl’ Phenomenon," The World Economy, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 39(2), pages 285-300, February.
    17. Agata Antkiewicz & John Whalley, 2005. "China's New Regional Trade Agreements," The World Economy, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 28(10), pages 1539-1557, October.
    18. Nathalie Jorzik & Frank Mueller‐Langer, 2020. "Multilateral stability and efficiency of trade agreements: A network formation approach," The World Economy, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 43(2), pages 355-370, February.
    19. Robert M. Stern, 2011. "Trade in Financial Services—Has the IMF been Involved Constructively?," Margin: The Journal of Applied Economic Research, National Council of Applied Economic Research, vol. 5(1), pages 65-92, February.
    20. International Monetary Fund, 2017. "Cluster Report: Trade Integration in Latin America and the Caribbean," IMF Staff Country Reports 2017/066, International Monetary Fund.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;

    JEL classification:

    • F1 - International Economics - - Trade
    • F10 - International Economics - - Trade - - - General
    • F13 - International Economics - - Trade - - - Trade Policy; International Trade Organizations

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:mie:wpaper:614. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: LSA Webmaster (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/riumius.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.