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...

Sleepiness is increasingly recognised as a major preventable cause of accidents on the road and in the workplace.1-23 It contributes to up to 20% of road traffic accidents (RTAs), with sleep-related RTAs claiming an excess morbidity and mortality similar to that from alcohol-related accidents. Sleepy driving is a known risk factor for RTAs: sleepy drivers have more frequent RTAs, and drivers at...

Regional trade agreements (RTAs) are considered as one of the major growth stimulant factors in the contemporary world due to their potentiality in generating welfare gains. When assessing welfare effects of RTAs, until recently, the attention of most researchers confined to the static theory, which addresses the resource allocation effect of trade integration (TI). Even though dynamic theory r...

BACKGROUND The M74 motorway extension, Glasgow, opened in June 2011. One justification for construction was an expectation that it would reduce road traffic accidents (RTAs) on local non-motorway roads. This study evaluated the impact of the extension on the number of RTAs, stratifying by accident severity. METHODS Data for the period 1997-2014 were extracted from a UK database of reported RT...

OBJECTIVE To investigate the predictors of road traffic accidents (RTAs) in middle school students, a case-control study was designed to seek new clues for prevention and control on RTAs in this population. METHODS Cases were 116 students who experienced RTAs from 2005/01/01 to 2005/12/31. 116 students were served as controls who were from the same class of the cases and matched by age and se...

This paper attempts to perform an empirical analysis of the effects of “labor clauses” provided in bilateral or plurilateral trade agreements (or regional trade agreements: RTAs) on working conditions that laborers in the RTA signatory countries actually face, using macro-level data for a wide variety of countries. The paper first reexamines the labor-provision classification of 223 RTAs in for...

The consequences of regional trade agreements (RTAs) on countries’ welfare are disputed. In this paper, we assess these effects using stock returns from a recent data set that spans over two hundred RTA announcements, eighty economies, and twenty years. We measure the effects of news concerning RTAs on the returns of national stock markets, after adjusting these returns for international stock ...

The amount of traffic generated by RTAs has increased substantially over the years. RTA will face congestion where there is any form of bottleneck restricting traffic. This will result in packet loss or delayed traffic which is unacceptable for RTAs. Therefore it is desirable for RTAs to implement congestion control mechanism to improve the stability of networks. TCP Friendly Rate Control (TFRC...

Some economists worry about the ‘spaghetti bowl phenomenon’ expected from proliferating regional trade agreements (RTAs). In particular, the complicated web of hub-and-spoke type of overlapping free trade agreements (FTAs) can result in high costs for verifying rules of origin (RoO) and trade diversion or suppression effects. This explains why almost half of the RTAs notified to the General Agr...