This paper analyzes the main economic issues of intellectual property rights (IPRs) protection in the context of the World Trade Organization (WTO). A retrospective view on the establishment of the TRIPS (traderelated aspects of intellectual property rights) Agreement, a still controversial accomplishment of the Uruguay Round of trade liberalization, is provided. The paper reviews the economic ...

This paper examines the reform outcome of the Uruguay Round relating to trade in agriculture, the nature of the unfinished reform agenda and policy choices for the Doha Round, with special emphasis on the position of developing in trade negotiations. A key policy inference is that, to be effective, agricultural trade liberalisation should involve simultaneous reforms of the trade regime and dom...

1846 Countries in Sub-Saharan Africa won fewer concessions on their exports in the Uruguay Round than did other developing countries, but they still emerged facing fewer or lower restrictions than others. They should be more active in the next Round, focusing negotiations not on trade preferences but on bound most-favored-nation tariff reductions. Summary findings Openness and liberal trade pol...

~ S national economies have become increasingly inter-related, national governments have broadened their efforts to coordinate trade-related policies. For years GATT negotiators concentrated on tariff reduction and trade liberalisation. The recently completed Uruguay Round negotiations included a number of agreements in previously uncharted waters (e.g., agreements on government procurement, tr...

Two major topics in recent rounds of international trade negotiations have been environmental concerns, and services trade. While each is undoubtedly important, they are unrelated. The service sector emits only a small part of overall pollution, and those service industries that do pollute do not trade internationally. This paper uses data on trade in services from the U.S. Bureau of Economic A...

International policies toward protecting intellectual property rights (IPRs) have seen profound changes over the past two decades. Rules on how to protect patents, copyrights, trademarks, and other forms of IPRs have become a standard component of international trade agreements. Most significantly, during the Uruguay Round of multilateral trade negotiations (1986–94), members of what is today t...

I November/December of 1999, leaders from around the world converged on Seattle with the goal of launching a new round of trade negotiations under the auspices of the World Trade Organization (WTO). This has been dubbed “WTO2000” in recognition of the new millennium. In light of the tremendous growth in world trade over the last fifty years— much of it fueled by multilateral trade liberalizatio...