Regional Rules in the Global Trading System

The proliferation of regional trade agreements (RTAs) over the past two decades has highlighted the need to look closely at the potential conflicts between regional and WTO rules or disciplines. A major obstacle to advancing understanding of RTAs is the absence of detailed information about their contents. This has limited the debate between those who view RTAs as discriminatory instruments hostage to protectionist interests and those who see them as conducive to multilateral trade opening.

This book provides detailed analysis of RTA rules in six key areas - market access, technical barriers to trade, contingent protection, investment, services and competition policy - across dozens of the main RTAs in the world. The analysis helps to provide new insights into the interplay between regional and multilateral trade rules, advances understanding of the economic effects of RTAs and contributes to the discussion on how to deal with the burgeoning number of RTAs.

• Represents the first systematic effort to describe and analyse the contents of regional trade agreements. Readers will obtain greater understanding of the rules governing trade in the rapidly growing field of regional agreements and will consequently be able to compare these regional rules with existing multilateral agreements under the WTO
• Includes detailed tables and charts of Regional Trade Agreement (RTA) rules on market access, trade remedies, technical barriers to trade, services, investment and competition policy. The book gives readers who may wish to embark on detailed empirical analysis of RTAs access to new data
• This book complements its detailed analysis of RTA rules with a survey of the latest economic theory on RTAs. It looks in particular at the question of whether RTAs are building blocks or stumbling blocks to multilateral trade liberalisation