An Internalisation‐based World Environmental Organisation

We evaluate the possibilities for a new World Environmental Organisation (WEO), with our discussion motivated both by recent calls for such an organisation in light of WTO trade and environment conflicts and the relative absence of internalisation of global externalities. We propose an organisation building upon the idea of facilitating Coasian deal on the global environment. We motivate the establishment of such an organisation by itemising the ways in which global environmental deals are presently restrained by various impediments, including free riding, property right ambiguities, and mechanisms for authentification and verification. We indicate how such a WEO might help in each of these areas, stressing the differences from the WTO which is a much narrower bargaining framework.     

An Asian Perspective on a World Environmental Organisation

We analyse the possible response from Asian developing countries (ADC) to the proposal for the formation of an international legal entity called World Environmental Organistion (WEO) designed to facilitate the internalisation of global environmental externalities. We argue that the WEO must recognise the fundamental indivisibility of the economic growthenvironment agenda in these countries. If suitable side payments in the shape of tariff concessions, relaxation of non‐tariff barriers and transfers of technology and cash are made and the WEO is seen to be relevant to the environmental problems of ADC, they may well participate in such a venture.     

A World Environmental Organisation: The Wrong Solution to the Wrong Problem

The starting point for a discussion of reform of the global environmental machinery should be an enquiry into the causes of the ineffectiveness of current arrangements. The argument made here is, firstly, that many of the criticisms made of the existing architecture by advocates of a WEO are misplaced, while ignoring other key faults. Secondly, that the suggested form of a WEO is problematic and may exacerbate existing problems, particularly for developing countries. I focus here more on the notion that a WEO should pursue the internalisation of environmental externalities. I argue that while this goal is worth pursuing, proposals for a deal‐brokering body are unlikely to make much progress in delivering it because of misplaced assumptions about the existing political order and the ability of a WEO to remedy current weaknesses.     

WTO贸易可持续发展的缺失与改革

作为管理国际贸易的场所,WTO日益重视贸易、环境与发展问题。在WTO运行实践中,与环境有关的贸易争端不胜枚举。虽然WTO将可持续发展思想确立为其基本宗旨,但多边贸易体系逐渐显示出其局限性。WTO需要改革,以建立起可使贸易与环境社会发展目标相容的具有全球意识的贸易环境规则。从长远看,WTO需要建立一个更加公开、公平、安全、非歧视的平衡贸易与环境发展体系。     

Eco‐labelling and the Trade‐Environment Debate

In this paper we consider the effectiveness of eco‐labels as a substitute for alternative, but trade‐restrictive, environmental policies. Specifically, while there are concerns that eco‐labelling requirements increase the cost of international trade, due to their potential for misuse as technical trade barriers, little attention has been given to the environmental benefits of eco‐labelling. We show that incentive problems inherent in eco‐labelling policies make it a very weak tool of environmental policy. Despite this, we argue that eco‐labelling schemes may remain popular, owing to the lack of alternative WTO compliant environmental policies. We also use this framework to consider the economic and political conflicts facing the EU with regard to its policies on genetically modified organisms.     

Solar Energy in Sub‐Saharan Africa: The Challenges and Opportunities of Technological Leapfrogging

For decades, Africa was generally perceived as the dumping ground for obsolete technologies. In recent years, technological leapfrogging, which is associated with the newly industrialized economies in Asia, has transpired in some key industries. In this article, we present the solar photovoltaic industry as one such industry and an integrated model of scaling up solar technologies. We identified five unique models aimed at scaling up solar energy in Africa: state‐led, nongovernmental organization and other agency–led, emerging‐market multinational enterprises–led, Avon, and pay‐as‐you‐go models. Our analysis focused on four countries in particular (Ghana, Nigeria, South Africa, and Kenya) and Africa in general. Despite the promising opportunities of this industry, a number of factors such as high up‐front capital costs and limited end‐user financing schemes have limited the technological process. We conclude by outlining the implications of the findings for theory and practice. © 2014 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.     

The WTO,the Environment and Health and Safety Standards

The World Trade Organization (WTO) is a product of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT). The WTO was created in the last round of negotiations (Uruguay Round, 1986‐94) to provide a stronger set of institutions to administer the various agreements negotiated under the GATT framework. Because the WTO is more powerful than its predecessors, critics claim that it poses a threat to national sovereignty. Concerns about the ability of nations to set their own environmental and health and safety agendas have figured prominently in these critiques. In addition, critics suggest that the WTO prioritises trade objectives at the expense of environmental and health and safety objectives. The article explores the extent to which the WTO has been able to reconcile trade, environmental and health and safety objectives by analysing its rulings on these matters. Overall, this analysis suggests that the WTO dispute resolution process has balanced all three sets of objectives. However, it is important to note the small number of disputes to date; only 21of the 175 disputes before the WTO involve environmental and health and safety matters. Further, the WTO has issued decisions in only six of these cases.     

Product Heterogeneity and Cost Allocations in Contingent Trade Protection

The WTO allows members to impose contingent protection, including anti‐dumping duties, within agreed constraints. Anti‐dumping proceedings typically name a single captioned product but include large numbers of individual products within that caption. The inclusion of multiple products creates a variety of issues for both anti‐dumping and other contingent protection measures, issues that have been prominent in national actions and WTO dispute settlements, but have been largely ignored in research. This work focuses on the most important such area, the allocation of costs among products in anti‐dumping proceedings. We develop a comprehensive economic analysis for cost allocation issues, and couple it with the accounting tools that must be used for its implementation, to derive the first‐best allocation methods for anti‐dumping purposes. These results have direct relevance in other contingent trade contexts, such as injury determinations and subsidy pass‐through analysis.     

WTO在环境保护中的作用及环境谈判对我国的影响

尽管WTO不是环保组织,但WTO同贸易在三个层次上产生交集。WTO原则和规则对应对气候变化也非常重要。贸易与环境谈判是正在进行的WTO多哈回合多边贸易谈判中的一个重要内容,各成员正致力于削减或取消环保和服务的关税和非关税壁垒。目前关于削减环保产品的关税和非关税壁垒的方法是各方关注和争论的焦点。中国尽管作为发展中国家的一员,但却位列全球环境货物贸易大国之列。这种双重性决定了中国在贸易和环境谈判中的独特立场。     

Beyond the WTO? An Anatomy of EU and US Preferential Trade Agreements

It is often alleged that PTAs involving the EC and the US include a significant number of obligations in areas not currently covered by the WTO Agreement, such as investment protection, competition policy, labour standards and environmental protection. The primary purpose of this study is to highlight the extent to which these claims are true. The study divides the contents of all PTAs involving the EC and the US currently notified to the WTO, into 14 ‘WTO+’ and 38 ‘WTO‐X’ areas, where WTO+ provisions come under the current mandate of the WTO, and WTO‐X provisions deal with issues lying outside the current WTO mandate. As a second step, the legal enforceability of each obligation is evaluated, and judged on the extent to which the text specifies clear obligations. Among the findings are: (i) EC agreements contain almost four times as many instances of WTO‐X provisions as do US agreements; (ii) but EC agreements evidence a very significant amount of ‘legal inflation’ (i.e. non‐legally enforceable provisions) in the WTO‐X category, and US agreements actually contain more enforceable WTO‐X provisions than do the EC agreements; (iii) US agreements tend to emphasise regulatory areas more compared to EC agreements.     

How do countries respond to anti‐dumping filings? Dispute settlement and retaliatory anti‐dumping

Empirical studies have found that countries may respond strategically to the anti‐dumping petition filed against their exporters through their own retaliatory actions. Although most previous studies have focused on retaliatory anti‐dumping filings, in this paper we explore another potential avenue for strategic response—filing a complaint under the World Trade Organization's (WTO ) dispute settlement understanding. Using a panel of global anti‐dumping filings between 1995 and 2011, we analyse under what conditions countries will choose to retaliate through either an anti‐dumping petition or a WTO dispute, and to what degree these two strategies are complementary or act as substitutes. We find statistical evidence that countries are more likely to file a WTO dispute when they have also filed a retaliatory anti‐dumping petition, suggesting that these two strategies may be complementary.     

Can Export Restrictions be Disciplined Through the World Trade Organisation?

A number of major agricultural exporting countries responded to high food prices from 2007 to 2011 by imposing export restrictions on agricultural commodities in efforts to constrain domestic food price inflation. These restrictions reduced the volume of internationally traded food and exacerbated international price spikes. Net food‐importing countries were faced with growing import bills, and non‐governmental organisations that target food security scaled‐back programme commitments and appealed for increased funding. There have subsequently been a chorus of calls for the development of a formal international framework that could discipline the use of agricultural export restrictions; the agreements of the World Trade Organisation (WTO) have been targeted as possible fora for such disciplines. We present a framework in which the efficacy of such disciplines can be analysed and conclude that constraints on agricultural export restrictions are not likely to be effective within the WTO's Dispute Settlement Understanding for two reasons. First, the timelines for dispute settlement in the WTO are too long to be useful in disputes about export restrictions during periods of high food prices. Second, the withdrawal of tariff concessions, or trade retaliation, that could be authorised in such cases would not be a credible response for many complainant countries.     

The Implications of WTO and GATS for the Banking Sector in Africa

In this paper we assess the implications of the World Trade Organisation (WTO) and the General Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS) for the banking sector in African signatory countries. With emphasis on the free trade element, we first review the relevant provisions of the GATS for banking services and the main exemptions held by African countries. We then analyse the main efficiency indicators for a sample of the top banks in 18 African economies for the period 1997‐1998. We also use univariate statistics to analyse the dispersion of the key bank pricing and liquidity indicators in these economies for the period 1994‐1998. The main findings imply that although full liberalization, implicit in the WTO and GATS protocols, will lead to a substantial shake‐up of the African banking industry. However, provided they have an appropriate regulatory framework and allow sufficient lead time, most African countries have little to fear from liberalization at least in terms of the continuing existence of a locally owned banking industry; and indeed, these countries could reasonably expect to be able to restructure and compete, at the very least in African‐wide or regional markets.     

WTO争端解决程序的适用规则——多边环境保护公约能否成为适用规则

WTO争端解决机制的专家组和上诉机构能否根据MEA和一般国际法处理冲突的规则优先适用MEA,并认定一项根据MEA所采取的贸易限制措施不构成对WTO法的违反呢?为回答这一问题,本文首先确认,现行WTO法将争端解决机制的适用规则严格限制于WTO适用协定,即根据其实体管辖权,专家组和上诉机构专门受理根据适用协定所提起的申诉,不能受理根据MEA或其他实体国际法而提起的申诉。因此,MEA或其他实体国际法不能成为适用规则。其次,通过分析对这一问题的赞成与反对意见,对包括MEA在内的实体国际法的限定性适用,本文提出了支持的观点,认为前者更有利于克服当今世界国际法的"碎片化"现象。     

International Labour and Environmental Standards Agreements: Is This Fair Trade?

Labour and environmental standards agreements are two contentious proposals that have contributed to the failure of the WTO to launch a new round of trade liberalisation discussions and have prevented the US President from obtaining fast‐track negotiating authority. Proponents of the agreements have been able to win substantial political support by arguing that standardised rules on labour practices and environmental regulations is the only way to assure that international trade remains fair. Although there are widespread demands for ‘fair trade,’ there remains a lack of understanding as to what fairness means exactly. Recently, a comprehensive catalogue of fairness principles was presented by Suranovic (2000). This paper will analyse the proposals for labour and environmental standards with respect to these fairness principles in order to characterise how fairness is used by supporters of these policies. The paper will also show that by using different fairness principles, opponents of these policies can argue that these same policies are unfair. The fact that reasonable notions of fairness can be applied by both opponents and proponents of these agreements highlights difficulties with fairness, per se, as a useful guide to policy. The paper uses this contentious issue to highlight the conceptual difficulties of proposals for fair trade.     

Beyond Agency and Structure: Triple-Loop Learning

With the demise of Andersen, LLP and new legislation that puts an end to self-governance in public accounting, the effectiveness of current models of accounting ethics have been seriously called into question. We argue that the profession suffers from fundamental limitations in its ethical framework that makes it impossible to effectively address ongoing ethical problems. The dominant representation of professional behavior is an agency model of ethics, in which the ultimate responsibility for identifying and dealing with ethical dilemmas resides with the individual. We argue that structural forces such as control over resources, meaning systems, and community norms and values also have a strong influence on the actions of accountants and that these must also be considered. The recent legitimation crisis has forced the accounting profession and its constituencies to begin to recognize and address the structural aspects of ethics as they enable and constrain action. We propose a framework based on structuration theory and learning theory that allows for systematic, multi-level investigation of the structural forces that cause ethical dilemmas to arise and to be recognized and that influence the manner in which they are analyzed and resolved. This framework should be capable of continual critique and reconfiguration as environmental conditions change.     

Tracing the Effects of WTO Accession on Policy‐making in Sovereign States: Preliminary Lessons from the Recent Experience of Transition Countries

We examine in this paper the effects of WTO Accession on policy‐making and institutional reforms in transition countries. This is done by looking at the experience of those transition countries which are already Members of the WTO and/or which have recently acceded. We start by trying to distinguish between effects of accession negotiations and from those which are the results of autonomous policy initiatives. The areas of domestic policy‐making which are considered in the analysis include market access, governance, government budget, structural reforms, trade and investment arrangements with regional partners and macroeconomic management. We find that no precise blueprint of accession conditions can be ascertained and argue that the WTO played a role, albeit not an exclusive one, in the process of liberalisation. We also find that the costs of WTO Accession are not negligible, but that the benefits of WTO Membership are significant in terms of improved, more predictable, market access and its stability, improved governance and a recourse to better economic policies without significant loss to government revenues.     

World Environmental Organisation: A Latin American Perspective

This paper offers insight into environmental problems that Latin American countries are currently facing. It also looks at how their domestic and global spheres are intertwined, and subsequently outlines pending roblems that would need international support from a World Environmental Organistion (WEO). One of the hardest and most important tasks of such an Organisation would be to render the Northern and the Southern environmental agendas compatible. While opinions concur on what the principle environmental problems in Latin America are – eforestation and natural resources degradation – the perception of these problems is quite different between North and South. For the former, the most important impact of the situation is the reduction of CO2 capacity and the biodiversity loss, while the main concern in Latin America is the poverty stricken economy behind the deforestation process and the vulnerability of the population that results from such phenomenon. Advancing simultaneously on both these tracks seems essential for a genuine improvement in environmental performance in the region.     

Carbon,Trade Policy and Carbon Free Trade Areas

This paper discusses both the potential contribution that trade policy initiatives can make towards the achievement of significant global carbon emissions reduction and the potential impacts of proposals now circulating for carbon reduction motivated geographical trade arrangements, including carbon‐free trade areas. We first suggest that trade policy is likely to be a relatively minor consideration in climate change containment. The dominant influence on carbon emissions globally for the next several decades will be growth more than trade and its composition, and in turn, the size of trade seemingly matters more than its composition given differences in emission intensity between tradables and non‐tradables. We then note that differences in emissions intensity across countries are larger than across products or sectors and so issues of country discrimination in trade policy (and violations of MFN) arise. We next discuss both unilateral and regional carbon motivated trade policy arrangements, including three potential variants of carbon emission reduction based free trade area arrangements. One is regional trade agreements with varying types of trade preferences towards low carbon‐intensive products, low carbon new technologies and inputs to low carbon processes. A second is the use of joint border measures against third parties to counteract anti‐competitive effects from groups of countries taking on deeper emission reduction commitments. A third is third‐country trade barriers along with free trade or other regional trade agreements as penalty mechanisms to pressure other countries to join emission‐reducing environmental agreements. We differentiate among the objectives, forms and possible impacts of each variant. We also speculate as to how the world trading system may evolve in the next few decades as trade policy potentially becomes increasingly dominated by environmental concerns. We suggest that the future evolution of the trading system will likely be with environmentally motivated arrangements acting as an overlay on prevailing trade and financial arrangements in the WTO and IMF, and eventually movement to linked global trade and environmental policy bargaining.     

Accessibility of Computer-based Simulation Models in Inherently Conflict-Laden Negotiations

The use of computer-based simulation models has a long history in areas such as environmental planning and policy-making, and particularly in water management. Policy making in these areas is often characterized by inherent conflict among diverse stakeholders with divergent interests. Although simulation models have been shown to be helpful for such problems, they are typically under the control of a technical analyst or governmental agency and are not available to negotiators in real time. Recent trends in computer technology and user expectations raise the possibility of real-time, user-controlled models for supporting negotiation. But is such accessibility likely to be helpful? This study used a "compressed" longitudinal experiment to investigate the impacts of different scenarios of accessibility of computer-based simulation models. The task was based on a real-life problem in Colorado River water management. Results revealed no significant differences among conditions for either solution quality or satisfaction. These results suggest that the common notion of "more is better" may be inappropriate, and resources for improving computer support of negotiation might best be focused elsewhere.