This handbook provides a holistic understanding of what the World Trade Organization does, how it goes about fulfilling its tasks, its achievements and problems, and how it might contend with some critical challenges.

The Oxford Handbook on the World Trade Organization provides an authoritative and cutting-edge account of the World Trade Organization. Its purpose is to provide a holistic understanding of what the WTO does, how it goes about fulfilling its tasks, its achievements and problems, and how it might contend with some critical challenges. The Handbook benefits from an interdisciplinary approach. The editorial team comprises a transatlantic partnership between a political scientist, a historian, and an economist. The distinguished and international team of contributors to the volume includes leading political scientists, historians, economists, lawyers, and practitioners working in the area of multilateral trade. All the chapters present original and state-of-the-art research material. They critically engage with existing academic and policy debates, and also contribute to the evolution of the field by setting the agenda for current and future WTO studies.The Handbook is aimed at research institutions, university academics, post-graduate students, and final-year undergraduates working in the areas of international organization, trade policy and negotiations, global economic governance, and economic diplomacy. As such, it should find an enthusiastic readership amongst students and scholars in History, Economics, Political Science, International Relations, Public Policy, and Law. Equally important, the book should have direct relevance for diplomats, international bureaucrats, government officials, and other policy-makers and practitioners in the area of trade and economic governance.

Virtually every important question of public policy today involves an international organization. From trade to intellectual property to health policy and beyond, governments interact with international organizations in almost everything they do. Increasingly, individual citizens are directly affected by the work of international organizations. Aimed at academics, students, practitioners, and lawyers, this book gives a comprehensive overview of the world of international organizations today. It emphasizes both the practical aspects of their organization and operation, and the conceptual issues that arise at the junctures between nation-states and international authority, and between law and politics. While the focus is on inter-governmental organizations, the book also encompasses non-governmental organizations and public policy networks. With essays by the leading scholars and practitioners, the book first considers the main international organizations and the kinds of problems they address. This includes chapters on the organizations that relate to trade, humanitarian aid, peace operations, and more, as well as chapters on the history of international organizations. The book then looks at the constituent parts and internal functioning of international organizations. This addresses the internal management of the organization, and includes chapters on the distribution of decision-making power within the organizations, the structure of their assemblies, the role of Secretaries-General and other heads, budgets and finance, and other elements of complex bureaucracies at the international level. This book is essential reading for scholars, practitioners, and students alike.

The financial system and its regulation have undergone exponential growth and dramatic reform over the last thirty years. This period has witnessed major developments in the nature and intensity of financial markets, as well as repeated cycles of regulatory reform and development, often linked to crisis conditions. The recent financial crisis has led to unparalleled interest in financial regulation from policymakers, economists, legal practitioners, and the academic community, and has prompted large-scale regulatory reform. The Oxford Handbook of Financial Regulation is the first comprehensive, authoritative, and state of the art account of the nature of financial regulation. Written by an international team of leading scholars in the field, it takes a contextual and comparative approach to examine scholarly, policy, and regulatory developments in the past three decades. The first three parts of the Handbook address the underpinning horizontal themes which arise in financial regulation: financial systems and regulation; the organization of financial system regulation, including regional examples from the EU and the US; and the delivery of outcomes and regulatory techniques. The final three Parts address the perennial objectives of financial regulation, widely regarded as the anchors of financial regulation internationally: financial stability, market efficiency, integrity, and transparency; and consumer protection. The Oxford Handbook of Financial Regulation is an invaluable resource for scholars and students of financial regulation, economists, policy-makers and regulators.

The World Trade Organization (WTO) is one of the most important international organizations in existence today. It contains a set of disciplines that affect the ability of governments to impose trade restrictions, and has helped to support the steady expansion of international trade since the 1950s. The WTO has been the focus of vociferous protests by anti-globalization activists and has experienced great difficulties in agreeing to new trade rules since its establishment. At the same time it has become the premier global forum for the settlement of trade disputes and has proven to provide a robust framework for international cooperation in the trade area. This book separates the facts from the propaganda and provides an accessible overview of the WTO’s history, structure and policies as well as a discussion of the future of the organization. It also confronts the criticisms of the WTO and assesses their validity. New to the second edition: discussion of legislative amendments to the WTO Agreement, in particular Aid for Trade, the Agreement on Trade Facilitation and the Bali Package evaluation of case law developments and major disputes since 2007, including analysis of the WTO and the financial crisis – in particular the trade policy responses of WTO Members and institutional response reflection on recent shifts to mega-regional agreements (TPP, TISA, TTIP) and their implications what next post Bali? Fully updated throughout, this book continues to be essential reading for students of international trade, international political economy, commercial law and international organizations as well as activists and others interested in a balanced account of a key global institution.

The book sheds light on trade policies of developing economies that joined the multilateral trading system after establishment of the World Trade Organization (WTO) in 1995, once known as the recently acceded members (RAMs). Its detailed case studies on Georgia, the People’s Republic of China, Viet Nam and Ecuador examine their engagement in accession and Doha Round negotiations and, where relevant, dispute settlement at the WTO. Using the economic theories of trade agreements and negotiations as a guide for intellectual inquiries, this book assesses motivations accounting for the RAMs’ evolving behaviors in the multilateral trading system. The first two chapters present background and overview, followed by four chapters on country-specific case studies. The book is concluded with the last chapter that provides one possible explanation of why the Doha Round has been faced with deadlocks while accession and dispute settlement have been working effectively.

The institutional shortcomings of the World Trade Organization (WTO) became apparent during the Doha Round of Trade negotiations that began in 2001 and which aimed to improve the success of developing countries' trading by lowering trade barriers and adjusting other trade rules. This "development agenda" meant different things to rich and poor countries. In addition, many of the circumstances that supported success in General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) negotiations of 1947 were no longer present after the WTO was founded in 1995. In Reconstructing the World Trade Organization for the 21st Century, Kent Jones examines the difficulties of the WTO in completing multilateral trade negotiations and possible ways to restore its ability to do so. The problem lies in the institutional structure it inherited from the GATT, which was designed for a more limited scope of trade negotiations among a relatively small number of wealthier, industrialized countries. Jones presents an institutional model of the GATT/WTO system, which describes why such an organization exists and how it is supposed to accomplish its goals. Institutional reforms will be necessary to restore the WTO's ability to complete global trade agreements, including a more flexible application of the consensus rule, a common understanding among all members about the limits of domestic policy space that is subject to negotiation, and clearer rules on reciprocity obligations. The popularity of bilateral and regional trade agreements, which have emerged as the alternative to WTO agreements, presents a threat to the WTO's relevance in trade negotiations, but also an opportunity to "multilateralize" new and deeper trade integration in future WTO agreements. Aid for trade may also play an instrumental role in bringing more developing countries into WTO disciplines. Above all, WTO members must develop new ways to find common ground in order to negotiate for mutual gains from trade.

The rules and regulations governing international trade have grown at an exponential rate in the years since the Uruguay Round agreements established the WTO in 1995. These agreements continue to act as the multilateral foundation of the body of law, which is being expanded by its own committees and in new arrangements. As the international trade law system grows, it comes under increasing scrutiny from scholars, government officials, and trade law practitioners, it raises questions about the overlap with other international legal, political, and economic regimes. This Handbook considers the system of international trade law and what it means for States, for economic systems, for other international regimes, for civil society, and for human welfare. The book opens by focusing on the regulation of international trade, considering the history, economics, and sources of international trade law, as well as the possibilities for the future. It considers the intersection of international trade law with States, the economic and institutional context of the world trading system, the framework of its substantive law, and the balance of trade objectives versus ethical responsibilities. The book concludes by offering analysis of new trade law developments in the agricultural, digital, and financial sectors, as well as outlining the settlement of trade law disputes both in the WTO and bilateral/regional trade agreements. The second edition broadens the scope of analysis beyond the WTO, analysing regional trade agreements and preferential trade arrangements, including the Trans-Pacific Partnership, and Canada-EU Trade Agreement. The new edition also considers developments within the WTO such as in the area of agricultural export subsidies, and the Trade Facilitation Agreement.

Over the past 10 years, the content and application of international trade law has grown dramatically. The WTO created a binding dispute settlement process and in resolving disputes, the judicial organs of the WTO have built up a substantial amount of new international trade law. Emerging from this new WTO process is an international trade law system that is in some respects self-contained and in other respects overlapping and linked to other international legal, economic and political regimes. The 'boundaries' of trade law are now generating enormous interest and controversy which, at a broader level, is subsumed within the debate over globalization. The detailed development of the rules of international trade is being examined with increasing frequency by scholars, government officials and trade law practitioners. But how does it fit with existing systems? How it is modified by them? How does the international trade law system affect and modify other regimes? This Handbook places international trade law within its broader context, providing comment and critique on contemporary thinking on a range of questions both related specifically to the discipline of international trade law itself and to the outside face of international trade law and its intersection with States and other aspects of the international system. It examines the economic and institutional context of the world trading system, its substantive law (including regional trade regimes) and the settlement of disputes. The final part of the book explores the wider framework of the world trading system, considering issues including the relationship of the WTO to civil society, the use of economic sanctions, state responsibility, and the regulation of multinational corporations.

Two high-level commissions—the Sutherland report in 2004, and the Warwick Commission report in 2007—addressed the future of the World Trade Organization and made proposals for incremental reform. This book goes further; it explains why institutional reform of the WTO is needed at this critical juncture in world history and provides innovative, practical proposals for modernizing the WTO to enable it to respond to the challenges of the twenty-first century. Contributors focus on five critical areas: transparency, decision- and rule-making procedures, internal management structures, participation by non-governmental organizations and civil society, and relationships with regional trade agreements. Co-published with the International Development Research Centre and the Centre for International Governance Innovation