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This chapter starts with brief overviews of global trade flows in services, the barriers that restrict such trade, and the economics of service sector protection and liberalization. This is followed by a summary of the main elements of the GATS (General Agreement on Trade in Services) and a discussion of the experience obtained in the first five years of the operation of the GATS in expanding the coverage of the agreement. The chapter ends with a brief assessment of the usefulness of the GATS as an instrument for the pursuit of service sector reform. The different sections are as follows: Conceptual and empirical issues; Barriers and potential gains from reform; The Uruguay Round negotiations; The GATS; Sector‐specific negotiations and agreements; Electronic commerce; The challenge of expanding the GATS; and Conclusion.

This chapter evaluates South Africa's trade policy under democracy, and critically reviews the burgeoning empirical studies of the effects of trade reform on trade flows, growth, employment, poverty, productivity, and inflation. The chapter is made up of three main sections. Section 2 reviews the process of trade reform in South Africa since the 1970s, with a particular focus on multilateral and preferential trade reform since 1994. Section 3 then evaluates the extent to which trade reform since 1994 has reduced nominal protection, effective protection and the anti-export bias. Section 4 reviews the empirical literature analysing the impact of trade liberalization and openness on the South African economy. The chapter concludes with an assessment of the scope for further trade reform.

This chapter examines the connection between trade liberalization and poverty reduction, with a particular focus on informal sector workers in cities and towns of the developing world. More specifically, it looks at the channel between how trade reforms affect urban informal workers and how that in turn affects urban poverty. It offers a general equilibrium model relating international trade, informal sector, and poverty with a wider reach. The theoretical result predicts that informal wages should increase if there is trade liberalization and that there would be an expansion in the urban informal industrial base. The aggregate empirical exercise tests growth in informal wages and estimates if wage growth is capable of reducing urban poverty.

This chapter investigates the parliamentary Labour right attitudes to industrial relations policy and trade union reform. In Place of Strife: A Policy for Industrial Relations was the first (recent) attempt ‘to confine industrial relations within a framework of law’. The In Place of Strife controversy had the effect of consolidating emerging divisions between Tony Crosland and Roy Jenkins. James Callaghan combined his attack on the Industrial Relations Act with an appeal for still greater voluntary discipline on the part of the trade unions. The economic role of trade unions was important for the small ‘l’ liberal wing of social democrats. Debilitating divisions of the Labour right occurred across a range of key themes and issues of industrial relations and trade union reform. The distance between the preferences of moderate but radical social democracy and the ‘rules’ of the Labour movement represented perhaps the deepest gulf in British politics.

This chapter examines the impact of a large reduction in average tariffs in Colombia between 1984 and 1998 on a variety of urban labor market outcomes: the probability of becoming unemployed, minimum wage compliance, informal-sector employment, and the incidence of poverty. The Colombian trade reforms indicate that the cross-sectional variation in tariff changes provides an appealing policy experiment to study how trade policy changes have affected the Colombian economy. Poverty in urban Colombia is highly correlated with unemployment. The chapter shows that the trade policy affected the probability of becoming unemployed. The poverty reduction observed between 1986 and 1994 cannot be attributed to trade-policy-induced changes in informality or to minimum wage compliance. Thus, the descriptive results establish that poverty in urban areas is highly linked with unemployment, employment in the informal sector, and noncompliance with minimum wages.

This chapter evaluates the impact of trade reform in India on poverty. It suggests that the rural poor gained less from the trade reforms than other income groups or the urban poor. It also illustrates that trade liberalization led to an increase in the poverty rate and the poverty gap in the rural districts where industries more exposed to liberalization were concentrated. In addition, the differential tariff changes across industries between 1991 and 1997 were as unrelated to the state of the industries as can be reasonably hoped for in a real-world setting. The most pronounced effects on poverty occurred in areas with inflexible labor laws (those that saw no change in industrial structure in response to trade liberalization) while inequality rose as a result of trade liberalization in areas with flexible labor laws.

EU trade mark law confers exclusive rights on the proprietor of a registered trade mark. It provides for three general types of protection. Article 9(2) EUTMR and Article 10(2) TMD offer protection against confusion under sub (b) (see paragraph 5.105 et seq.) and protection against dilution under sub (c) (see paragraph 5.182 et seq.). In double identity cases (identical signs used for identical goods or services), sub (a) (see paragraph 5.64 et seq.) provides for ‘absolute’ protection (recital 16 TMD) combining elements of both forms of infringement on the basis of the function theory developed by the Court.

As with other intellectual property rights, the exclusive rights of the trade mark proprietor are limited in several respects. At the international level, Article 17 TRIPS offers room for the adoption of ‘limited exceptions’ in domestic legislation (see paragraphs 2.68–2.72). On this basis, Article 14 of the Trade Mark Directive (TMD) and Article 12 of the European Trade Mark Regulation (EUTMR) provide a tool for reconciling the interests of the trade mark owner with competing interests of other traders and the public at large. As explained by the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU), these provisions, by limiting the effects of the exclusive rights of the trade mark owner, seek ‘to reconcile the fundamental interests of trade mark protection with those of free movement of goods and freedom to provide services in the common market in such a way that trade mark rights are able to fulfil their essential role in the system of undistorted competition which the Treaty seeks to establish and maintain’.

Under European trade mark law, protection is only acquired through registration (Article 6 EUTMR; Article 1 TMD). Whether the mark is actually used or not is of no relevance at this stage: neither is it a requirement for protection, nor does it grant a substantive right under the European Union Trade Mark Regulation (EUTMR) or the Trade Mark Directive (TMD). However, such protection may follow from national law. Member States are free to grant use-based trade mark protection within their jurisdiction, and in a number of them—Austria, Germany, Italy, the Nordic countries, and, in the form of passing off, the United Kingdom—such protection is available under terms that may differ from country to country. The specificities of the legal regime applying to such signs are independent from the provisions in the TMD.

International trade and investment across countries, both developed and developing economies, are a major source of economic growth by improving allocative efficiency of resources and rapid flow of advanced technologies. Several developing and socialist economies that pursued inward orientation since the last forty years started to open up their economies for international trade and investment. Countries that had initial endowment of industrial, technological endowments, and basic institutions have able to take advantage of this phenomenon. India fits this bill. It acquired basic industrial, technological, and capitalist institutions. The reforms operate on the basis of these endowments. The objective of the book is to trace out the underlying theoretical and empirical factors that demonstrate the effect of the reforms It explains the reason for dividing the book into two part: (1) International Trade Behaviour: the Pre-reform Era and (2) International Trade and Investment Behaviour: The Post-reform era.

For the Six, Chapter 4 shows, the Spanish question boiled down to whether they would grant the preference rather than how. Documentary records and trade data show that the EEC did not discriminate against Spanish products. The EEC’s policy on Franco Spain was forged around the justification that relations with dictatorships of less-developed countries served to promote economic development and social change. These changes would naturally lead to a collective desire for political change. France and West Germany acted accordingly and exercised due influence on their peers. In the pursuit of their own interests, the European Community and its member-states opted to induce progressive reform towards West-European institutional standards over punishment or rupture. The political debate was limited to the speed of such changes, not to the validity of the assumption. The Europeanization/democratization binomial implied that closer relations with the EEC would promote convergence towards West-European standards, including democratization.

Despite a dramatic growth in agricultural trade between the United States and Cuba, trade between these two states has been “one-way trade,” primarily due to U.S. economic sanctions. A new scenario could potentially emerge as diplomatic and trade relations between the United States and Cuba improve and are eventually normalized. These changes could facilitate the expansion of U.S. agricultural and food exports to the island, as well as Cuban exports to the United States. This chapter examines the evolution of U.S. agricultural exports to Cuba since the approval of the Trade Sanctions Reform and Export Enhancement Act (TSRA) in 2000. The future prospects and policy implications for U.S.-Cuba agricultural trade are also discussed, taking into account the shift in U.S–Cuba relations initiated after December 17, 2014.

This chapter highlights how the voices of some interest groups are magnified in the ongoing EU trading and clearing reform process, using the European Commission proposals for over-the-counter (OTC) derivatives as a point of reference. It addresses transparency reform proposals with two examples that show how they are likely to benefit some special interests. The chapter also presents examples to illustrate how the voices of some interest groups are magnified when it comes to proposals aiming at mandating the use of trading platforms and clearing houses.

The contribution of small firms in employment and earnings has been a significant concern for policymakers in developing countries. Many policy instruments have been employed to promote the growth of small firms in developing countries. India too has historically supported its small-scale sector and promotion of small-scale industrial sector gained significant importance as an element of industrial policy in India since Independence. These support policies and programmes have spawned considerable amount of literature documenting them and debating on the real effect of these policies, especially the protective measures on small firms. This chapter presents a thematic review of these studies and argues that there have been considerable changes in the policies and programmes supporting the small firms in the Indian manufacturing sector, especially since the onset of economic reforms of 1991.

This chapter explains both the “what” and the “why” of common criticisms of globalization's record on poverty and inequality. It is argued that this continued criticism is due to several factors: the use of different methodologies in estimating poverty and inequality, the concerns of the critics of globalization about the short-term costs versus the longer-term gains from trade reform, their rejection of a perfectly competitive framework, and different interpretations regarding the evidence. The opinions of the poor seem to suggest that the influence of globalization on their lives is less positive than measures of changes in their average income would suggest. It appears that the difference of opinion between globalization's supporters and critics can be largely explained by differences in prior views and priorities, as well as current ambiguities in the empirical evidence.

Harmonized EU trade mark law contains rules on trade marks as objects of property in Articles 16 to 24a of the European Union Trade Mark Regulation (EUTMR) and Articles 22 to 26 of the Trade Mark Directive (TMD). These rules cover transfer and assignment, the possibility of giving trade marks as security and granting rights in rem, the levy of execution, the involvement of EUTMs in insolvency proceedings, and issues of trade mark licensing. The substantive provisions are accompanied by procedural rules concerning the recordal of corresponding legal transactions in the register. While the TMD only guarantees the possibility of registration, the EUTMR contains more detailed registration requirements.

This chapter investigates an important historical stabilization episode in Chile, a country with one of the longest histories of chronic inflation in the world, and which, starting in the late nineteenth century, suffered recurrent and increasingly frequent inflationary outbursts. Of the many stabilization programs adopted to tackle this problem, the 1955–1958 package implemented with the advice of the United States consulting firm Klein-Saks, is, undoubtedly, one of the most fascinating. The chapter argues that the foreign advisors of the Klein-Saks Mission gave initial credibility to the stabilization program launched in 1955, playing the role of independent, nonpartisan technocratic arbiters. However, providing initial credibility was not enough to ensure success. In spite of supporting trade reform, foreign exchange rate reform, and the deindexation of wages, Congress failed to act decisively on the fiscal front.