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RESEARCH AND ANALYSIS

Discussion forum: World Trade Report 2011
The WTO and preferential trade agreements: From co-existence to coherence

The discussion forum on preferential trade agreements (PTAs) received numerous valuable contributions over a nine month period. Its aim was to promote an open debate on themes relevant to PTAs and to allow people from a variety of backgrounds to interact and express their views regarding PTAs and the multilateral trading system.

We would like to take this opportunity to thank all the participants for their interesting insights into this topic and for making this forum a success.

This forum seeks to promote an informed debate on new era preferential trade agreements — the topic of the World Trade Report 2011. Documents posted on the forum are the sole responsibility of their authors. They have no legal effect on the rights and obligations of WTO members, nor do they imply any judgement on the part of the WTO Secretariat regarding the consistency of any policy with the provisions of the WTO agreements.

Background
Understanding the synergy and the possible incoherence between preferential trade agreements⁽¹⁾ and the multilateral trading system is crucial to determining what the WTO’s future agenda on PTAs should be. In an era of offshoring and global supply chains, we may be observing the emergence of a “new era” of preferential trade agreements. These new era PTAs are not primarily about preferential tariffs but about such issues as property rights, establishment rights, repatriation of profits, temporary movement of personnel, infrastructure services, trade facilitation, rules of origin, and dispute settlement mechanisms accessible to private agents, which are crucial to the success of production sharing networks.

Note:
1 This term is used in the academic literature to refer to reciprocal free trade agreements and regional trade agreements. This convention will be used throughout the report.

Recently submitted articles back to top


02/08/2011	Regional integration in East Asia needs strong political commitment By Liudmila V. Popova and Vladimir N. Kovalenko > Have your say
02/08/2011	Peculiarities and rationale of asymmetric regional trade agreements By Vladimir G. Sherov-Ignatiev and Sergei F. Sutyrin > Have your say
18/07/2011	“Is The WTO’s Article XXIV Bad?” By Monika Mrázová, David Vines and Ben Zissimos > Have your say
18/07/2011	Are preferential agreements stepping stones to other markets? By Ana Cristina Molina > Have your say
18/07/2011	Looking for Local Labor-Market Effects of the NAFTA By John McLaren and Shushanik Hakobyan > Have your say
18/07/2011	Member-Heterogeneity and the Common External Tariff in a Customs Union By Subhayu Bandyopadhyay, Sajal Lahiri and Suryadipta Roy > Have your say
12/07/2011	Preferential Trade Agreements, Trade Creation and Trade Diversion By Henri Joel Nkuepo > Have your say
12/07/2011	Impact of environmental regulations on trade in the main EU countries: conflict or synergy? By Roberta De Santis > Have your say
05/07/2011	Africa needs a deeper integration agenda By Trudi Hartzenberg > Have your say
28/06/2011	Multilateralizing services preferences By Pierre Sauvé and Anirudh Shingal > Have your say
21/06/2011	The Political Economy of Regional Trade Agreements: General Interests versus Special Interests By Xuepeng Liu, Assistant Professor of Economics Department of Economics & Finance, Kennesaw State University, USA > Have your say
14/06/2011	“Multilateralizing regionalism” in Latin America and the Caribbean By Osvaldo Rosales and Sebastian Herreros > Have your say
07/06/2011	Regional Integration and Trade Facilitation By Jean-Christophe Maur and Ben Shepherd > Have your say
31/05/2011	Regional integration and North-South industrial location: An application to the Euro-Mediterranean area By Corinne Bagoulla (University of Nantes) and Nicolas Péridy (University of South, Toulon-Var) > Have your say
24/05/2011	Small Country Gains from North-South Preferential Liberalization: The Case of Honduras and DR-CAFTA By Denis Medvedev > Have your say
17/05/2011	Completing the EU Customs Union. The Effects of Trade Procedure Harmonization By Yves Bourdet and Maria Persson > Have your say
10/05/2011	A Closer Look at East Asia’s Free Trade Agreements By Masahiro Kawai, Asian Development Bank Institute, Tokyo, and Ganeshan Wignaraja, Asia Development Bank, Manila > Have your say
03/05/2011	Cross-Border Lobbying and External Tariffs in Preferential Trading Agreements By Subhayu Bandyopadhyay, Sajal Lahiri and Howard J. Wall > Have your say
19/04/2011	Advancing Trade Facilitation Reform: The Gains to Trade in ASEAN By Ben Shepherd and John S. Wilson > Have your say
12/04/2011	Do democratic FTAs foster trade flows? By Jean-Marc Siroën, professor of international economics at the University Paris-Dauphine > Have your say
06/04/2011	Preferential Trade Agreements and Services By Ms Amélie Guillin, Ph.D student in International Trade (University of Paris I) > Have your say
29/03/2011	Free Trade Agreements and the Consolidation of Democracy By Xuepeng Liu (Kennesaw State University), Emanuel Ornelas (London School of Economics) > Have your say
22/03/2011	Preferential Trade Agreements: Implementation Matters By Jean-Pierre Chauffour, Anabel González and Jean-Christophe Maur > Have your say
15/03/2011	Preferential Trading Arrangements as Strategic Positioning By Daniel J. Seidmann, Professor of Economic Theory, University of Nottingham. > Have your say
08/03/2011	Disaggregating PTAs and the Role of International Division of Labor on PTA Formation By Hazel C. Parcon, Associate Professor at the School of Economics of the De La Salle University in Manila, Philippines. > Have your say
01/03/2011	The implications for bananas of the recent trade agreements between the EU and Andean and Central American countries By Giovanni Anania, Professor in the Department of Economics and Statistics at the University of Calabria, Italy > Have your say
22/02/2011	Preferential agreements, regional cooperation and standards By Jean-Christophe Maur and Ben Shepherd > Have your say
15/02/2011	The Wedding of Trade and Human Rights: Marriage of Convenience or Permanent Match? By Susan Ariel Aaronson and Jean Pierre Chauffour > Have your say
08/02/2011	On the Relationship between Preferential and Multilateral Trade Liberalization: The Case of Customs Unions By Kamal Saggi (Vanderbilt University), Halis M. Yildiz (Ryerson University) and Alan Woodland (University of New South Wales) > Have your say
02/02/2011	Trade Agreements in Southeast Asia By Richard Pomfret, Professor of Economics, University of Adelaide, Australia and Patricia Sourdin, Adjunct Professor of International Economics, Johns Hopkins University Bologna Center, Italy > Have your say
25/01/2011	How does trade respond to Preferential Trade Agreements? By Neil Foster and Robert Stehrer — The Vienna Institute for International Economic Studies (WIIW) > Have your say
18/01/2011	Modelling Kemp-Vanek Admissibility: The Effects of Free Trade Areas on Non-Members By Robert Waschik, Senior Lecturer Faculty of Law and Management, School of Economics and Finance — Melbourne (Bundoora) > Have your say
11/01/2011	Explaining Nineteenth-Century Bilateralism: Economic and Political Determinants of the Cobden-Chevalier Network By Markus Lampe, Assistant Professor, Department of Economic History and Institutions, Universidad Carlos III Madrid, Spain > Have your say > Article: Explaining Nineteenth-Century Bilateralism: Economic and Political Determinants of the Cobden-Chevalier Network
14/12/2010	Always Look at the Bright Side of Non-Delivery: WTO and Preferential Trade Agreements, Yesterday and Today By Petros C. Mavroidis, Professor of Foreign and Comparative Law at Columbia University's Law School, and Professor Law at the University of Neuchatel > Have your say > Article: Always Look at the Bright Side of Non-Delivery
23/11/2010	Votes, Vetoes, and Preferential Trading Agreements by Edward D. Mansfield, Department of Political Science, University of Pennsylvania and Helen V. Milner, Department of Politics, Princeton University > Have your say > Article: Votes, Vetoes, and Preferential Trading Agreements
01/11/2010	What will the World Trade Report 2011 be about? by Nadia Rocha and Robert Teh, WTO Secretariat

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Structure of the Report

The 2011 World Trade Report is structured as follows:

• Historical analysis and current trends
• Going beyond the standard analysis
• The contents of PTAs and new patterns of production
• Synergies between the multilateral trading system and PTAs