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CONCLUDE DOHA: IT MATTERS! By Bernard Hoekman, Will Martin and Aaditya Mattoo. The World Bank, 2009. The Doha Round must be concluded not because it will produce dramatic liberalisation but because it will create greater security of market access, the authors of this working paper argue. Its conclusion would strengthen, symbolically and substantively, the WTO’s valuable role in restraining protectionism in the current downturn. What is on the table would constrain the scope for tariff protection in all goods, ban agricultural export subsidies in the industrial countries and sharply reduce the scope for distorting domestic support - by 70 per cent in the EU and 60 per cent in the US. Greater market access for the least-developed countries will result from the “duty free and quota free” proposal and their ability to take advantage of new opportunities will be enhanced by the Doha-related “aid for trade” initiative. Finally, concluding Doha would create space for multilateral cooperation on critical policy matters that lie outside the Doha Agenda, most urgently the trade policy implications of climate change mitigation. The working paper is available here.
THE WTO SINGLE UNDERTAKING AS NEGOTIATING TECHNIQUE AND CONSTITUTIVE METAPHOR. By Robert Wolfe. The Journal of International Economic Law, November 2009. Nothing is agreed until everything is agreed. Negotiations in the World Trade Organization (WTO) proceed simultaneously, not sequentially, and all members must accept all the results. The author of this article shows that the so-called Single Undertaking is both a negotiation technique and a constitutive metaphor. It does not cause an outcome to negotiations, whether in a round or the daily life of the WTO, but it shapes the possibility of an outcome. The methodological innovation of the article is the use of counterfactual analysis to assess whether the Single Undertaking can be relaxed using concepts suggested by the various critiques. The study is available at http://jiel.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/content/abstract/jgp038v1 (subscription or article purchase required).
INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY AND SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT: DEVELOPMENT AGENDAS IN A CHANGING WORLD. By Ricardo Meléndez-Ortiz and Pedro Roffe, eds. December 2009. Intellectual property (IP) has gained an unprecedented importance in the new world of globalisation and the knowledge economy. However, experience, as well as cyclical attitudes toward IP, show that there is no universal model of IP protection. This comprehensive book considers new and emerging IP issues from a development perspective, examining recent trends and developments in the area. Presenting an overview of the IP landscape, the contributing authors subsequently narrow their focus, providing wide-ranging case studies from countries across Africa, Asia and Latin America on topical issues in the IP discourse. For more information, or to purchase the book, please visit http://www.e-elgar.co.uk/Bookentry_Main.lasso?id=13620.
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