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This Lecture Has a Dual Theme. Theme Number One is the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, the OECD, where I worked from the beginning of 1984 till the spring of this year. I was originally asked by Ghita Ionescu to prepare for Government and Opposition an article on the Organization, as one of a series which the journal has been carrying on different international agencies. Two such articles have already appeared: one by Sir Nicholas Bayne, on the GATT and the Uruguay Round, and the other by Andrew Crockett on the IMF. I am pleased to be following these distinguished authors, the more so since I think of them both as former quasicolleagues — a term that I will explain later — at the OECD. But when the further idea of a lecture was raised, Professor Ionescu suggested that my subject-matter should be extended to cover international economic cooperation more generally, on the understanding that this broader theme would be linked to the specific case of the OECD.

Taiwan has had discriminatory trade and investment policies towards China, severely limiting economic engagement across the Strait. Not having free and open trade with China, one of the largest and most important parts of the East Asian economy, has resulted in Taiwan's underperforming in attracting foreign direct investment, effectively cut Taiwan off from participating fully in East Asian production networks and prevented the deepening of its specialisation in the regional and international economy. The Economic Cooperation Framework Agreement is a watershed in cross-Strait relations and gives Taiwan the opportunity to integrate more fully into the East Asian economy. There is pressure now for Taiwan to pursue preferential trade deals with other countries. This is not the best way forward; rather, Taiwan should pursue a multilateral trade strategy and focus on domestic reforms that will bring larger economic gains, economic diversification and avoid the political risks to the cross-Strait relationship associated with preferential deals.

Abstract
Environmental shocks in the form of natural disasters are well known for their impact on domestic economies. Less known, however, is their impact on the global economy. The scant existing literature suggests that macro-economic impacts manifest in observed empirical decreases in international trade. The literature, however, does not examine whether the impact of natural disasters on trade varies for trading partners with differing levels of market integration. This paper examines if preferential liberalization serves to protect or buffer against the negative economic consequences of natural disasters. I show that deep preferential liberalization can not only protect countries against the negative macro-economic impact of natural disasters but can actually allow countries to increase exports during natural disaster events that otherwise induce trade decline. These findings suggest that by allowing countries to expand the quantity and the range of exports, preferential trade agreements lead to enhanced resilience against exogenous shocks.

AbstractThis research note highlights an important element missing from rational design theories of international agreements: "institutional context"—the presence or absence of existing and prior agreements between prospective partners in "new" cooperation. If, as rational design theorists argue, agreement design is deliberate, strategic, and directed toward enhancing contracting parties' ability to credibly commit to future cooperation, then prior design "successes" should influence the terms of additional cooperation. We test for this omitted variable problem in three agreement design outcomes:ex antelimitations on agreement duration, exit clauses, and dispute-settlement provisions. Through an augmentation and reanalysis of data from a key study in the rational design literature—Barbara Koremenos's "Contracting Around International Uncertainty"—we show institutional context is positively correlated with inclusion ofex antetime limitations in negotiated agreements and negatively correlated with the inclusion of exit clauses and third-party dispute-settlement provisions. Institutional context also mediates and conditions the effects of the explanatory variable at the heart of existing rational design theories—uncertainty about the future distribution of gains from cooperation. Our findings show that the collective appeal of particular design features varies not only with the nature of underlying strategic problems, but also with degrees of shared institutional context.

The provisions aiming at reducing non-tariff barriers and notably regulatory differences are the main innovation in CETA and the one that presents most important economic gains. In order to promote compatibility and convergence of their regulations, the EU and Canada have established cooperation mechanisms that, for the first time, integrate guidelines regarding good regulatory policies within a trade agreement but also set up permanent institutional schemes with the objective of facilitating and promoting regulatory cooperation between the parties. Even though these regulatory cooperation mechanisms included in the new generation of trade agreements such as CETA, do not modify directly the legislative and regulatory procedures of the EU and its Members states and are presented as voluntary for the parties, the European civil society is very much concerned about them. It fears that these mechanisms will endanger European democratic principles and restrict the regulatory autonomy of the parties and notably their right to adopt rules in order to follow socio-environmental objectives. This article aims at taking these worries seriously and putting forward an analysis of the regulatory cooperation provisions within CETA which is firstly descriptive and then evaluative. This analysis follows the framework established by the Max Planck Institute for Comparative Public and International Law in the context of the development of an international public law theory.