This paper focuses on the sluggish growth of world trade relative to income growth in recent years. The analysis uses an empirical strategy based on an error correction model to assess whether the global trade slowdown is structural or cyclical. An estimate of the relationship between trade and income in the past four decades reveals that the long-term trade elasticity rose sharply in the 1990s, but declined significantly in the 2000s even before the global financial crisis. These results suggest that trade is growing slowly not only because of slow growth of Gross Domestic Product (GDP), but also because of a structural change in the trade-GDP relationship in recent years. The available evidence suggests that the explanation may lie in the slowing pace of international vertical specialization rather than increasing protection or the changing composition of trade and GDP.

This major extension of existing scholarship on the fragmentation of international law utilises the concept of 'regimes' from international law and international relations literature to define functional areas such as human rights or trade law. Responding to existing approaches, which focus on the resolution of conflicting norms between regimes, it contains a variety of critical, sociological and doctrinal perspectives on regime interaction. Leading international law scholars and practitioners reflect on how, in situations of diversity and concurrent activity, such interaction shapes and controls knowledge and norms in often hegemonic ways. The contributors draw on topical examples of interacting regimes, including climate, trade and investment regimes, to argue for new methods of regime interaction. Together, the essays combine approaches from international, transnational and comparative constitutional law to provide important insights into an issue that continues to challenge international legal theory and practice.

This book addresses the increased fragmentation and internationalization of production. It explores how concurrent business transformations in manufacturing and marketing impact global and developing economies, and how supply chain initiatives and information sharing impact overall organizational performance. It further connects marketing and advertising as an important link between organizations and its partners; education as a bridge between developing and developed world economies; and growth as a long-term objective of increasing integration at the regional and global level. Through a series of case studies, scholars across the US and France contribute chapters on the manufacturing, marketing, and internationalization of luxury fashion brands, music advertising, the growth of Amazon, and the business landscapes in India, China, Africa, and North Korea. The book provides academic libraries, international business scholars, graduate students, and policy makers with insights and opportunities that enable firms to achieve a competitive advantage in the marketplace.

Using state-of-the-art econometric tools, this book examines the implications of international fragmentation of production for the performance of the Japanese manufacturing industry.The impact of the ongoing process of international fragmentation of production and outsourcing has become a highly contentious issue in developed economies such as the US and Japan. Concerns about deindustrialisation and large-scale job losses - 'the export of jobs' have generated a political backlash against multinationals and globalisation. Using detailed data from Japanese multinationals this book rigorously analyses the Japanese experience and compares and contrasts it with the experience of US manufacturing. The study finds no empirical evidence that expansion of multinational activities in foreign countries produces job losses in the home country. Indeed, when demand induced indirectemployment effects are taken into account the increased profitability of Japanese firms is likely to have increased overall employment in Japan. However, the shift of labour intensive activities to low wage economies associated with the international fragmentation of production generates adjustment pressures and a structural shift in favour of skilled workers in Japanese manufacturing.

Beyond Fragmentation assembles a unique team of expert practitioners and leading scholars to explore and advance the study of cross-fertilization among international courts and tribunals. Using an inter-disciplinary and multi-method approach, contributors analyse how international courts and tribunals interact and why it matters in practice. After a thorough review of prior assessments of cross-fertilization and fragmentation, the editors offer a new take on competition and cooperation across courts and tribunals, exploring both substantive and procedural elements as well as the diverse agents of cross fertilization. Contributors engage with procedural issues, identifying a “procedural cross-fertilization pull” and why and how procedure is converging in international courts and tribunals. Case studies on the convergence in the law of the sea and at the European Court of Human Rights provide contrasting experiences of substantive cross-fertilization. The volume also identifies a variety of agents of cross-fertilization, including judges, litigants, counsel, and international organizations.

Globalization and Fragmentation offers a succinct, original critique of the century's international developments. It sets out a challenging analysis of globalization as a process reflecting political relations both between and within states.

The current system of international law is experiencing profound transformations. Indeed, the simultaneous processes of globalization combined with the disintegration of international systems of governance and law-making pose complex challenges for legal scholarship. The doctrinal response to these challenges has been theorized within two seemingly contradictory discourses in international law: fragmentation and constitutionalisation. This book takes an innovative approach to international law, viewing the processes of the fragmentation and constitutionalisation as being profoundly interconnected and reflective of each other. It brings together a select group of contributors, including both established and emerging scholars and practitioners, in order to explore the ways in which the problems of fragmentation and constitutionalisation are viscerally linked one to the other and thus mutually conditioning and stimulating. The book considers the theory and practice of international law looking at the two phenomena in relation to the various fields of international law such as international criminal law, cultural heritage law and international environmental law.