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This chapter examines the original negotiations in the OECD that paved the way for the development of the GPA. These negotiations took place against a background of domestic use of procurement linkages. The chapter looks at the negotiation of state-specific exceptions as part of the accession negotiations. It considers the United States' negotiations at the time of joining the 1979 WTO GPA, and then the Canadian approach to accession to the 1994 GPA, then considers the approach that the GPA itself took to such linkages.

This chapter examines the relationship between procurement linkages and the interpretation of the existing GPA. If a state subject to GPA disciplines takes action on status equality using procurement linkages, World Trade Organization (WTO) adjudicatory institutions may be called on to determine whether these actions are in compliance with trade disciplines. The issue will be the appropriate amount of legal space that states will be given to pursue such goals.

This chapter talks about the high-achieving students in the school. The chapter inventories the suite of identity characteristics in these students that were oriented toward controlling their school experiences. The components of psychological capital exhibited by achievement-oriented students at Burnham included strong agentic beliefs in students' capacities to influence the kinds of people they were and would become, and the self-conscious development of a strong work ethic resulting in a habitual proclivity to be “productive.” “High-achieving” and “under-achieving” are terms given to the eight focal students who were selected through consultation with teachers and review of grade point average (GPA). “Achievement-oriented” refers to a larger group of students at the school with various GPAs and in various classes who exhibited characteristics of striving for academic success. The chapter tries to interpret these identity characteristics as components of psychological capital oriented to maximize students' abilities to compete.

This chapter discusses how the achievement-oriented Burnham students went through their daily lives with more or less ever-present high levels of stress and fatigue, and it relates important gender differences in this area. The chapter provides a glimpse inside these students' stress-filled days and illuminates their successful and unsuccessful attempts to cope. Over 70 percent of students reported being stressed out “frequently” or “all the time,” and while female students had significantly higher cumulative grade point averages (GPAs) than male students, they also reported higher levels of stress than male students and were much more likely to identify their schoolwork as the most important source of stress. The chapter expresses that the voices and experiences of these students demonstrate that the most successful are those that are able to habituate to more or less ever-present levels of stress and fatigue.

Public procurement is one of the few major policy areas where WTO members continue to have discretion to discriminate at will against foreign suppliers. Limitations on the ability to discriminate only apply to governments which have signed the voluntary Government Procurement Agreement (GPA) or which enter into PTAs that include disciplines in this area. But even for signatories of the GPA, the proportion of goods and services contracts awarded to foreign firms is generally quite small. Thus, there is considerable room for expanding access to national procurement markets. The more ambitious PTAs go beyond a focus on discrimination and procedural rules to include cooperative mechanisms for technical assistance and capacity building, convergence of procedures, and periodic review and allowance for adjustments in the rules of the game. They also make better allowances for pursuit of the non-economic objectives of governments.

The WTO Agreement on Government Procurement (GPA) is the most significant international instrument of procurement market liberalization. This chapter assesses the GPA’s development and objectives with reference to its relationship with national procurement regulation, and other international instruments. The GPA’s achievements and deficiencies are considered in a number of areas, including expansion of membership and coverage, domestic review procedures, and statistical reporting. The chapter comments on the new work program directed towards enhancing the participation of SMEs and removing discrimination in this area. It also raises questions about the Appellate Body’s interpretation of the GATT procurement derogation in Canada-Renewable Energy.

This chapter examines the nature and application of the most-favored nation (MFN) principle under the WTO Agreement on Government Procurement (GPA), and the General Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS), with specific reference to RTAs with procurement market access commitments. Under the GPA, the MFN principle is based on strict reciprocity and a conditional MFN requirement. Furthermore, any access to procurement markets for services is conditioned and constrained by GATS schedules and by the application of the MFN principle operating within the GATS. The chapter questions whether the WTO legal framework and method of negotiating procurement provisions works against the wider objectives of the WTO. It tests this hypothesis by examining the procurement commitments set out in selected RTAs signed between GPA parties, between a GPA party and non-GPA party, and those signed between non-GPA parties.

This chapter provides a brief review of the EU’s public procurement regulations and discusses the changes introduced by three directives in 2014. It then describes the EU regime for, and experience with, domestic challenge and review mechanisms through which companies can contest the behavior of procuring entities in the EU. The EU procurement regime is argued to be generally consistent with GPA and very salient from the perspective of the internationalization of procurement policies, as it applies to a group of twenty-eight nations that have agreed to adopt common rules of the game in the interest of achieving an integrated single market for goods and services.

The EBRD-UNCITRAL Public Procurement Reform Initiative is a technical cooperation program of the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) and the United Nations Commission for International Trade Law (UNCITRAL). The Initiative promotes the modernization of national public procurement systems and supports reform projects in transition countries designed to develop modern public procurement policies. This chapter explains the EBRD-UNCITRAL Initiative’s unique technical cooperation concept and discusses the challenges faced by the Initiative’s experts’ team working in Armenia, in particular how the 2011 UNCITRAL Model Law is used as a regulatory tool to bridge the gap between the regional and global trade agreements, that is, the Eurasian Economic Union Treaty (EEUT) and the WTO’s Agreement on Government Procurement (GPA) and their respective requirements for public procurement policies.

This chapter reviews the main attributes of the Chinese public procurement laws, identifying the areas where international norms are relevant. It reviews the procurement issues in the PTAs to which China is party and China’s process toward the WTO’s Agreement on Government Procurement (GPA), revealing China’s current standing toward procurement law internationalization. It argues that the relationships between the Chinese domestic and international system are proactive. On one hand, international regimes are relevant to the Chinese system, and with China’s GPA progress, this relevance may be intensified and of special implication. On the other, a developed Chinese system may contribute to the internationalization of its procurement law. Given the benefits and challenges posed by China’s accession negotiation to the GPA, it is suggested that GPA members accept China sooner but with a relatively smaller offer and that internationalization of the Chinese procurement law could be incremental.

This chapter aims to examine how the EU is currently conducting its deep trade agenda in the area of public procurement and attempts to determine the extent to which the EU’s current drive to open procurement markets abroad is informed (or not) by the issues that have undermined attempts to thrash out a multilateral trade agreement on procurement—particularly the concerns voiced by developing counties regarding the loss of policy space. The chapter discusses the parameters of the current debate regarding the interface between international trade liberalization and public procurement regulation, describes the regulatory frameworks for public procurement established at WTO and EU level and analyses the EU’s current external trade policy in the area of public procurement as well as the public procurement provisions included in EU free trade agreements.

This chapter assesses how professors grade students. It argues that the practice of grading is replete with problems. Grades are a kind of language. They are meant to be a form of communication. They are sometimes meant to communicate to students how well they’ve mastered a set of material. Most colleges calculate grade point averages (GPAs) and compare students to one another. Grades are also sometimes meant to communicate to outsiders something about how good a student is, and how he or she compares to other students from other universities. However, the grading and GPA systems are such a mess that they largely fail to accomplish these goals. In some cases, the mathematics used to calculate an average final grade in a class are incoherent. In nearly all cases, the mathematics used to calculate students’ GPAs are also incoherent.

This chapter considers policy measures to increase the participation of SMEs in government procurement and their potential economic and social policy benefits. It considers the scale and importance of government procurement, and barriers to SME access to these markets. While some SME support policies are often considered to run counter to fundamental goals of government procurement (notably preference policies that may reduce competition and transparency), the chapter explains that many SME policies in fact support efficient and effective government procurement. It explores the synergies between such SME policies and measures designed to ensure cross-border access to government procurement markets. It considers relevant provisions in the WTO Agreement on Government Procurement and the UNCITRAL Model Law on Public Procurement, and concludes that their recent revisions to promote transparency and effectiveness in the pursuit of these policies are welcome, but that further work to ensure their effective application in practice is needed.