Earlier Sections in this Report have sought to understand why international cooperation in trade matters seems to make sense to governments and how such cooperation translates into institutions and rules. We will now focus on the main achievements of multilateral trade cooperation over the last six decades and explore some of the core challenges and issues that the system faces today. The Secti...

In a multilateral bargaining problem with one buyer and two heterogeneous sellers owning perfectly complementary units, we find that there exists an equilibrium which leads to inefficient delays when the buyer negotiates with the higher-valuation seller first and where players are extremely impatient. We also find that the buyer prefers to negotiate with the lower-valuation seller first, except...

Yu-Feng (Diana) Yang, National Sun Yat-Sen University This qualitative study aims to understand how English learners interpret shared space in an online multilateral English blogging context and how their interpretations of shared space contribute to their multilateral exchange experience. Twenty-four Asian learners of English from two different universities—one in Japan and one in Taiwan—parti...

When environmental externalities are international-i .. e. transfrontier-they most often are multilateral and embody public good characteristics. Improving upon inefficient laissez-faire equilibria requires voluntary cooperation for which the game-theoretic core concept provides optimal outcomes that have interesting properties against free riding. To define the core, however, the characteristi...

while the relations of iran and russia with the central asian states have been analyzed separately in previous studies, the regional foreign policies of these two countries have not been compared in detail. as a result, it would be difficult to comprehend the extent of the similarities and differences inherent in the foreign policy behaviors of these two key players in the central asian region....

One of the most striking development in the world trading system since the mid 1990s is a surge in Regional Trade Agreements (RTAs). From about 50 till 1990, the number of RTAs notified to the World Trade Organization (WTO) has crossed 250 in 2003 and estimates indicate that over 300 RTAs will be in effect by 2007. Initially WTO encouraged the growth of RTAs because it believed that regional in...

The World Trade Organization’s (WTO) goal of liberalizing multilateral trade does not exist in a vacuum; that is to say, liberalizing trade is not an end in itself. The preamble to the Agreement Establishing the World Trade Organization (“Marrakesh Agreement”), explicitly states that “[t]he Parties to this Agreement, recognizing that their relations in the field of trade and economic [endeavor]...

Grid computing enables the sharing of heterogeneous resources within virtual organizations. Since entities in virtual organizations are independently administrated, cross-domain management of access control and intrusion protection is critical for grid services. To provide better protection in grid systems, multiple domains collaborate in making security decisions. Unfortunately, the absence of...

Though the Multilateral Agreement on Investment (MAI) has failed, the original draft is likely to serve as a basis for future negotiations. This article gives a critical assessment of the draft from an industrial economics point of view. First, I summarize the contents of the agreement which is relevant for market structure and competition. Then I develop the industrial economics approach, whic...