A diplomat's economics: reciprocity in the Uruguay Round negotiations

Joseph Finger

World Trade Review, 2005, vol. 4, issue 1, 27-40

Abstract: A diplomat's jurisprudence, as Bob Hudec characterized the early GATT legal system, was a compromise between jurisprudence as understood by lawyers and the reality of the limited influence trade negotiators had over national trade policy decisions. A diplomat's economics was a parallel compromise between economics as understood by economists and the reality of the many objectives that governments hoped the GATT would serve. As the GATT evolved into the WTO and took on more complicated areas of economic policy, its jurisprudence evolved with it, but its economics remained the same. When the bargain was tariff concessions versus tariff concessions, the difference between mercantilist economics and real economics did not matter, but in the new areas the WTO took on at the Uruguay Round it does matter. There is such a thing as comparative advantage among institutions, and in the new areas the WTO is at a comparative disadvantage relative to the international development banks.

Date: 2005
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (4)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.cambridge.org/core/product/identifier/ ... type/journal_article link to article abstract page (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:cup:wotrrv:v:4:y:2005:i:01:p:27-40_00

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in World Trade Review from Cambridge University Press Cambridge University Press, UPH, Shaftesbury Road, Cambridge CB2 8BS UK.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Kirk Stebbing ().