What Prospects for the World Trading System?

Agnes Ghibutiu and Andra Ghibutiu

Revista de Economie Mondiala / The Journal of Global Economics, 2014, vol. 6, issue 3

Abstract: New developments and dramatic changes are under way in the world trading system. This paper aims to take stock of the latest and most relevant developments and highlight the prospects for global trade governance. The focus is on three major issues, i.e. : (1) the outcome of the Ninth WTO Ministerial Conference in December 2013 in Bali (Indonesia) and especially its significance for enhancing the multilateral trading system; (2) the accelerated pace and scale of negotiations on regional trade agreements (RTAs) and their wider impact; and (3) the positive results of continued unilateral trade liberalization efforts, in contrast with the pervasiveness of crisis-related protectionist measures. The paper concludes that, despite improved prospects for multilateral trade liberalization following the last WTO Ministerial Conference, the world trading system is becoming more fragmented and less coherent, and also more uncertain, being increasingly driven by RTAs and a variable geometry approach to WTO trade agreements.

Keywords: the world trading system; the World Trade Organization (WTO); the Doha Round; trade policy; multilateral trade agreements; regional trade agreements (RTAs); trade liberalization; trade protectionism (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: F10 F13 F15 F23 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2014
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.iem.ro/rem/index.php/REM/article/view/161/193 (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:iem:journl:v:6:y:2014:i:3:id:2822000009237059

Access Statistics for this article

Revista de Economie Mondiala / The Journal of Global Economics is currently edited by Simona Moagar Poladian, PhD

More articles in Revista de Economie Mondiala / The Journal of Global Economics from Institute for World Economy, Romanian Academy Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Ionela Baltatescu ( this e-mail address is bad, please contact ).