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In most countries, competition in the telecommunications industry is subject to both sector-specific regulation and more general antitrust policies. At the same time, a process of international market liberalisation is under way in telecommunications which can only be truly effective - and further advance - if appropriate competitive safeguards are in place. Trading partners should agree on certain minimum standards to be observed in this area in order to better combat anticompetitive conduct and avoid international conflicts. The Reference Paper to the WTO Agreement on Basic Telecommunications is an important step in this direction and may also serve as a model for other network industries. It is a framework of rules which has to be filled with concrete decisions in the fields of antitrust and regulation. More importantly, it must be complemented by multilateral competition rules of a more general nature. ; Der Wettbewerb im Telekommunikationssektor unterliegt in den meisten Ländern sowohl sektorspezifischer Regulierung als auch der allgemeinen Wettbewerbspolitik. Gleichzeitig findet eine internationale Liberalisierung der Telekommunikationsmärkte statt, deren Effektivität - und Fortgang - wesentlich von der Existenz wettbewerblicher Schutzklauseln abhängt. Die Handelspartner sollten sich in diesem Bereich auf bestimmte Mindeststandards zur besseren Bekämpfung wettbewerbswidriger Praktiken und Vermeidung internationaler Konflikte verständigen. Das Reference Paper zum WTO-Abkommen über Telekommunikationsgrunddienste ist ein bedeutender Schritt in dieser Richtung und auch ein Vorbild für andere Netzsektoren. Es enthält eine Rahmenregelung für konkrete politische Entscheidungen und bedarf insbesondere einer Ergänzung durch multilaterale Wettbewerbsregeln allgemeinerer Art.

Customary international law, although long recognized as a primary source of international law, remains replete with enigmas, both conceptual and practical. These include how to determine the existence of opinio juris, the function of the state practice requirement, the definition of jus cogens customary norms, and the relationship between customary international law and ethics. In part because of these enigmas, the subject has generated a wide-ranging literature. However, no recent book-length work has attempted to articulate a comprehensive theory of customary international law that can effectively resolve these questions. This book sets out to accomplish this goal. Its approach is unique in a number of ways. For example, it is multidisciplinary and draws insights from fields such as legal theory, philosophy, political science, and game theory. In addition, it is anchored in a sophisticated ethical framework and explores at length the interconnections between customary international law and ethics

This dissertation consists of three chapters related to international trade and industrial policies. The first chapter establishes that international trade and the market size affect institutional quality positively. Institutions, such as contract enforcements and rule of law, are arguably one of the most important determinants of economic development. I adopt an incomplete-contract approach to model institutions. Due to contract incompleteness, a firm can hold up its suppliers and distort production. When the effective market size facing firms is larger, due to trade liberalization, or increases in population or numbers of trading partners, benevolent governments have incentive to improve institutional quality to facilitate production to meet the larger demand. Interestingly, in my multiple-country framework, the competition in institutional quality also matters in a Nash-equilibrium sense. Institutional quality increases in trade-liberalized countries whereas those in the non-liberalized ones may decrease. This chapter also empirically shows the positive impact of real effective market size on institutional quality, supporting the model. The second chapter finds that foreign direct investment (FDI) affects China's industrial agglomeration negatively by utilizing the differential effects of FDI deregulation in 2002 in China on different industries. This result is somewhat counter-intuitive, as the conventional wisdom tends to think that FDI attracts domestic firms to cluster around them for various agglomeration benefits, technological spillovers in particular. To reconcile our empirical findings and the conventional wisdom, we develop a theory of FDI and agglomeration based on two counter-veiling force. Technology diffusion from FDI attracts domestic firms to be around them, but fiercer competition drives firms away. Our theory indicates that which force dominates depends on the scale of the economy. When the scale of the economy is sufficiently large, FDI discourages agglomeration. We find various evidence on this competition mechanism. The third chapter studies the Chinese industrial subsidy policy from 1998 to 2007. Our industry equilibrium model establishes that the optimal policy should be positively correlated with various input distortions confronting firms. Based on this prediction, we evaluate the effectiveness of subsidy policy in China and document four stylized facts: (1) The efficiency of subsidy policy in China has grown by around 50% over the ten years, with a notable increase at the ascendance of Hu Jingtao into presidency; (2) Subsidy policy tends to have differential efficiency effect on the sector level, with more downstream sectors experiencing higher efficiency; (3) Provinces in the 'Western Development Program' received more subsidies compared to their eastern counterparts; (4) Labour and materials distortions have been properly corrected in the western regions, and materials distortion can explain most of the variation of subsidies in China. Finally we quantify the effect of the policy on welfare.