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In the United States cases involving the interpretation of laws dealing with international trade are heard by a specialized court, the Court of International Trade, and on appeal by a specialized appellate court, the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit. In a groundbreaking study, Isaac Unah studies these courts to explore the way specialized courts work and how they fit into the federal court system. We know little about why specialized courts are created and how their role in interpreting law might differ from the role played by the courts of general jurisdiction. These courts play an important role in regulating agencies that affect many aspects of our lives, including the Internal Revenue Service, the Patent Office, and agencies that administer trade laws. The author considers the way these courts relate to the work of the agencies whose cases must always come to these courts. And he offers fresh insights into the differences between specialized courts and courts of general jurisdiction.
This book will be of interest to scholars studying the judiciary, bureaucracies, and international trade law and administration.
Isaac Unah is Assistant Professor of Political Science, University of North Carolina.

Fair Trade has come a long way in the last 20 years. The Fair Trade Revolution celebrates the movement's achievement and takes up the challenge of improving more lives through fair dealing with producers.

This critical account of the fair trade movement explores the vast gap between the rhetoric of fair trade and its practical results for poor countries, particularly those of Africa. In the Global North, fair trade often is described as a revolutionary tool for transforming the lives of millions across the globe. The growth in sales for fair trade products has been dramatic in recent years, but most of the benefit has accrued to the already wealthy merchandisers at the top of the value chain rather than to the poor producers at the bottom.

Ndongo Sylla has worked for Fairtrade International and offers an insider’s view of how fair trade improves—or doesn’t—the lot of the world’s poorest. His methodological framework first describes the hypotheses on which the fair trade movement is grounded before going on to examine critically the claims made by its proponents. By distinguishing local impact from global impact, Sylla exposes the inequity built into the system and the resulting misallocation of the fair trade premium paid by consumers. The Fair Trade Scandal is an empirically based critique of both fair trade and traditional free trade; it is the more important for exploring the problems of both from the perspective of the peoples of the Global South, the ostensible beneficiaries of the fair trade system.

Since the early 1980s, the U.S. economy has experienced a growing wage differential: high-skilled workers have claimed an increasing share of available income, while low-skilled workers have seen an absolute decline in real wages. How and why this disparity has arisen is a matter of ongoing debate among policymakers and economists. Two competing theories have emerged to explain this phenomenon, one focusing on international trade and labor market globalization as the driving force behind the devaluation of low-skill jobs, and the other focusing on the role of technological change as a catalyst for the escalation of high-skill wages.

This collection brings together innovative new ideas and data sources in order to provide more satisfying alternatives to the trade versus technology debate and to assess directly the specific impact of international trade on U.S. wages. This timely volume offers a thorough appraisal of the wage distribution predicament, examining the continued effects of technology and globalization on the labor market.

"A very important and long-awaited major contribution to the debate . . . Her work cannot be ignored."
--Nils Petter Gleditsch, Journal of Peace Research

"Barbieri builds on a solid foundation of work on trade and conflict and specifies the conditions under which trade reduces and increases conflict. . . . The bottom line is that this is an important book in the study of trade and conflict because of its comprehensive approach."
--Kathy L. Powers, Perspectives on Politics

"Barbieri's analysis reveals the fundamental and intellectual weaknesses of the various arguments on this topic. [A] solid and timely contribution to the literature"
--Choice


The Liberal Illusion sheds light on an increasingly important question in international relations scholarship and the domain of policy making-whether international trade promotes peace. By examining a broad range of theories about trade's impact on interstate relations and undertaking a set of empirical analyses of the trade-conflict puzzle, Katherine Barbieri provides a comprehensive assessment of the liberal view that trade promotes peace. Barbieri's stunning conclusions depart from conventional wisdom in international relations. Consequently, The Liberal Illusion serves as an important counterargument and a warning call to policymakers who rely upon trade-based strategies to promote peace, strategies that appear to offer little hope of achieving their goals.

With the end of the Cold War, the search for a new international and economic order has begun. In this comprehensive account, Sylvia Ostry provides a critical analysis of an international trade system in the throes of rapid and far-reaching change.

With keen historical awareness, Ostry examines the role of key economic power brokers, particularly the United States, in the reconstruction and reconfiguration of an international economy after World War II. She argues that U.S. policy efforts were so successful that they led to an unprecedented renewal of economic growth, living standards, and education levels in postwar Europe and Japan. Ironically, those same policy successes unintentionally fostered the relative decline of U.S. dominance on the world trade scene as the reduction of trade and investment barriers prompted friction and conflict between different kinds of capitalist systems.

Identifying the historical and legal issues key to postwar trade policy, Ostry has commandingly charted our economic course through the last half of this century and, perhaps, into the next.

"Sylvia Ostry knows this subject as few others do, both as a scholar of international trade issues and a major player in the ongoing negotiations that have created the rules of the trade game. The Post-Cold War Trading System is a fine summary of where we've been and where we ought to be going."—Peter Passell, economic scene columnist for The New York Times

Regional economic arrangements such as free trade areas (FTAs), customs unions, and currency blocs, have become increasingly prevalent in the world economy. Both pervasive and controversial, regionalization has some economists optimistic about the opportunities it creates and others fearful that it may corrupt fragile efforts to encourage global free trade.
Including both empirical and theoretical studies, this volume addresses several important questions: Why do countries adopt FTAs and other regional trading arrangements? To what extent have existing regional arrangements actually affected patterns of trade? What are the welfare effects of such arrangements? Several chapters explore the economic effects of regional arrangements on patterns of trade, either on price differentials or via the gravity model on bilateral trade flows. In addition, this book examines the theoretical foundation of the gravity model. Making extensive use of the gravity model of bilateral trade, several chapters explore the economic effects of regional arrangements. In addition, this book examines the theoretical foundation of the gravity model.

Economic news once confined to the business pages of the newspapers now receives headline coverage, whether it involves protests in Seattle or sweatshops in Asia. As attention is increasingly focused on economic policy, it becomes even more important for noneconomists to be able to make sense of these stories. Is the Asian economy sinking or rising? What effects will a single European currency have on the US economy? Kenneth W. Dam's The Rules of the Global Game provides, in clear and practical language, a framework to help readers understand and answer such questions. Dam takes us beyond the headlines and inside the decision-making process as it is populated by lobbyists, special interest groups, trade associations, and public relations firms. While some economists and thinkers have idealized plans for US international economic policy, Dam, currently the deputy secretary of the treasury, manages to merge this idealism with a consideration of what it means to govern at the intersection of competing groups with competing claims.

In The Rules of the Global Game, Dam first lays out what US international economic policies are and compares them to what they should be based on how they affect US per capita income. With this foundation in place, Dam then develops and applies principles for elucidating the major components of economic policy, such as foreign trade and investment, international monetary and financial systems, and current controversial issues, including intellectual property and immigration. Underlying his explanations is a belief in the importance of worldwide free trade and open markets as well as a crucial understanding of the political forces that shape decision making. Because economic policy is not created in a political vacuum, Dam argues, sound policymaking requires an understanding of "statecraft"-the creation and use of institutions that channel the efforts of interest groups and political forces in directions that encourage good economic outcomes.

Dam's vast experience with the politics and practicalities of economic policy translates into a view of policy that is neither academic nor abstract. Rather, Dam shows us how policy is actually made, who makes it, and why, using examples such as GATT, NAFTA, the US-Japan semiconductor agreement, and the Asian financial crisis. A rare book that can be read with pleasure and profit by layperson and economist alike, The Rules of the Global Game allows readers to understand the policies that shape our economy and our lives.

In this volume, some of the world's foremost authorities analyze the many challenges and opportunities confronting the WTO, addressing issues such as national policies, labor standards, and the environment. Presuming no technical background in economics, this is a comprehensive introduction to the WTO's place in the global economy and will appeal to anyone interested in world trade.
"[T]his book is a tour de force, with consistently fine papers by leading experts, and it is worthy of any bookshelf." —Joel P. Trachtman, American Journal of International Law

"This latest conference volume from the National Bureau of Economic Research is likely to be the definitive reference work on the WTO for years to come. . . . Specialists and non-specialists alike will gain a great deal from a careful reading of this impressive volume." —John Ravenhill, Australian Journal of Political Science

"For anyone who is interested in the further development of the rule system for the world economy, this book is a must." —Horst Siebert, Review of World Economics

In this timely volume emanating from the National Bureau of Economic Research's program in international economics, leading economists address recent developments in three important areas. The first section of the book focuses on international comparisons of output and prices, and includes papers that present new measures of product market integration, new methodology to infer relative factor price changes from quantitative data, and an ongoing capital stock measurement project. The next section features articles on international trade, including such significant issues as deterring child labor exploitation in developing countries, exchange rate regimes, and mapping U. S. comparative advantage across various factors. The book concludes with research on multinational corporations and includes a discussion of the long-debated issue of whether growth of production abroad substitutes for or is complementary to production growth at home. The papers in the volume are dedicated to Robert E. Lipsey, who for more than a half century at the NBER, contributed significantly to the broad field of empirical international economics.

The recently concluded Uruguay Round of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) will undoubtedly lead to a fundamental transformation of the world trading system as an instrument of a global economy. In Traders in a Brave New World, Ernest H. Preeg, a distinguished former U.S. diplomat and trade negotiator, presents a blow-by-blow account of the Uruguay Round, an examination of the historical context in which it took place, and an insider's assessment of the agreement's future impact on the international trading system.

Preeg places the Uruguay Round in the broader context of global politics and economics, showing how changes in the world order—from the collapse of communism to dramatic economic reforms in developing countries—influenced both the topics of negotiations and their outcome. He then assesses the final GATT agreement as a case study in international negotiations and evaluates its probable effects on income and trade.

Finally, Preeg looks to the short- and long-term issues confronting future trade-policy negotiators. He shows that the international trade agenda will consist of three evolving types of agreement—further multilateral commitments, regional free-trade agreements, and selective bilateral accords. Going to the heart of current debates on the "new world order," an important final chapter evaluates the political and economic relationships that will result from the international trading system.

Tungsten is a rare ferrous metal whose ability to form molecular compounds with other elements has made it one of the essential elements in steelmaking, electronics, and various military technologies. This is the first comprehensive study of the use of tungsten and its role in modern technology, politics, and international trade. The book combines a detailed general overview of tungsten’s uses in science and technology with a history of tungsten mining in the U.S. and elsewhere; international competition for tungsten supplies, especially between the two world wars of the twentieth century; and the complex national and international politics involved in supporting and protecting the U.S. tungsten supply and tungsten-mining industry. Tungsten in Peace and War, 1918–1946 is a significant addition to the history of technology and a revelation of the complex role that tungsten and other critical metals play in national and international politics and in the world economy.