concerns regarding the trans-pacific partnership (tpp) have raised awareness about the negative public health impacts of trade and investment agreements. in the past decade, we have learned much about the implications of trade agreements for public health: reduced equity in access to health services; increased flows of unhealthy commodities; limits on access to medicines; and constrained policy...

This paper discusses a quantitative simulation analysis on the impact of Japan’s FTAs in Asia using a CGE model of global trade. It has been argued that a regional FTA would be a step toward global trade liberalization rather than a final goal. In fact, it is shown that changes in sectoral trade balance and production would vary according to the partners in Japan’s FTAs in Asia deviating from t...

the least developed and developing countries constitute two third of the members the world trade organizations (wto). these groups of countries have different views and concerns on international trade issues. as far as development is concerned, they have different needs and their economic system is often weak and fragile and therefore, they need extra protection. the wto agreements contain spec...

This paper studies how income inequality affects the probability of signing free trade agreements (FTAs) in a political economy framework. The median voter approach to FTA formation within a Heckscher-Ohlin framework predicts that an increase in inequality lowers the desirability of an FTA if the partner country is relatively labor abundant, ceteris paribus, and raises the desirability of such ...

The TRIPS Agreement of the World Trade Organization (WTO) mandated the introduction of protection of intellectual property rights, notably patents, for pharmaceutical products. While the implications for the access to medicines contained in the terms of this Agreement raised significant concerns, a recent new wave of free trade agreements, negotiated outside the WTO, requires even higher levels...

I evaluate in this paper the impact of free trade areas (FTAs) on the world trading system. I use an oligopolistic-political-economy model where the external tariffs of FTA members, as well as the decision to form FTAs, are endogenously determined. In this context, I show that FTAs are primarily beneficial to the multilateral trading system. This conclusion is based, first, upon the finding tha...

Accompanying the unprecedented outburst of Free Trade Agreements (FTAs), scholarly interests in the new wave of regionalism have been flourishing. Yet, notwithstanding its contribution, extant literature has paid little attention to an important aspect of FTA formation: the choice of FTA partners and the underlying structure of the FTA network. While theoretical conjectures about likely FTA par...