EU Commercial Policy in a Multipolar Trading System

In recent years the bipolar multilateral trading system of the post-war years has given way to a multipolar alternative. Although many specifics have yet to be determined, some contours of this new trade policy landscape are coming into focus. This article examines their implications for the EU's external commercial policy. Particular attention is given to both the state of business-government relations and the propensity to liberalise under the auspices of reciprocal trade agreements by Brazil, India, and China, the potential new poles of the world trading system. I thank John Curtis and Bob Wolfe for stimulating my thinking on this subject in a recent conversation on the multipolar trading system. I also thank Roderick Abbott, Richard Baldwin, Krishna Gupta, Bernard Hoekman, Patrick Low, and John Whalley for helpful comments on the first draft of this paper. I alone am responsible for the errors contained herein.     

Taming the Chinese Dragon: A Promising Cornerstone for Transatlantic Trade Cooperation?

Intereconomics - The desire of many policymakers to tame the Chinese Dragon is apparent. But what is particularly disappointing is the little, if any, reflection on how to induce the government in...     

International Cartel Enforcement: Lessons from the 1990s

The enforcement record of the 1990s has demonstrated that international private cartels are neither relics of the past nor do they always fall quickly under the weight of their own incentive problems. Of a sample of forty cartels prosecuted by the United States and European Inion in the 1990s, twenty‐four cartels lasted at least four years. And for the twenty of the cartels in this sample where sales data are available, the annual worldwide sales in the affected products exceeded US$30 billion. Prevailing national competition policies are oriented towards addressing harm done in domestic markets, and in some cases merely prohibit cartels without taking strong enforcement measures. In this paper we propose a sequence of reforms to national policies and to international cooperation that will strengthen the deterrents against international cartels. Furthermore, aggressive prosecution of cartels must be complemented by vigilance in other areas of competition policy. If not, firms will respond to the enhanced deterrents to cartelisation by merging or by taking other measures that lessen competitive pressures.     

Do all networks facilitate international commerce? US law firms and the international market for corporate control

This paper estimates the effects of several American law firms' international networks of offices on the total value of overseas mergers and acquisitions (M&A) by US corporations. Nowadays many nations can review proposed mergers and US law firms help clients overcome such regulatory hurdles, effectively greasing the market for corporate control. However, they can also oppose transactions that are inimical to their clients' interests. I present evidence that suggests that Baker & McKenzie—the US law firm with the most overseas offices—has facilitated such transactions, whereas the combined effect of the next five largest American law firms has tended to reduce such M&A. J. Japanese Int. Economies 17 (4) (2003) 520–537.     

An Interim Assessment of the US Trade Policy of ‘Competitive Liberalization’

Since 2001, the Administration of George W. Bush has pursued a trade policy known as Competitive Liberalization. This policy envisages a series of mutually‐reinforcing and sequential steps to open markets abroad to US companies, to strengthen market‐oriented laws and regulations overseas, and to place the United States at the centre of the world trading system. Foreign and security policy considerations have influenced US trade policy making, perhaps more so than in the 1990s. To date the principal outcome of this policy has been the negotiation by the United States of numerous free trade agreements, mainly with developing countries, individually or in sub‐regional groupings. In addition to characterising this policy in detail, the principal purpose of this paper is to assess the logic underlying this approach to trade policy making and whether Competitive Liberalization has begun to fulfil the promise spelled out for it at the beginning of this decade.     

The Politicisation of EC Anti‐dumping Policy: Member States,Their Votes and the European Commission

This paper examines one political‐economy aspect of the European Communities’ (EC) anti‐dumping policy that has tended to be overlooked in prior studies; namely, the role that member states play in deciding whether to impose definitive duties on imports that have been found to be dumped and that are deemed to have injured a European industry. We find that, in the late 1990s, numerous disagreements between member states occurred over the merits of imposing anti‐dumping duties. These disagreements may well have been partly responsible for the strong decline in the number of European anti‐dumping investigations initiated after 1999.     

The Impact of Economic Sanctions on South African Exports

In the mid‐1980s many nations imposed sanctions on South African exports, most of which were subsequently removed during 1991–3. I estimate the effect of eight industrialized economies' sanctions on their imports from South Africa. Outliers are found to strongly influence the parameter estimates. Failure to take account of them leads to the conclusion that sanctions by the (then) European Communities most adversely affected South African exports. In fact, robustness checks reveal that the United States' Comprehensive Anti‐Apartheid Act played the largest role, reducing bilateral imports by a third. The broader implications of these findings for estimating gravity equations are discussed.