Major developments in trade policy are currently taking place in the mega-regional trade agreements, in particular in the Trans-Pacific Partnership, the Trans-Atlantic Trade and Investment Partnership, and the Trade in Services Agreement. These agreements are setting new standards and breaking new ground in setting the rules for global commerce. In addition, a large number of other agreements are incorporating state-of-the-art provisions governing at least some aspects of trade and investment. These include the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership, the Tripartite Free Trade Agreement, and a large number of bilateral trade and investment agreements. Complementing and internalizing the recent WTO Trade Facilitation Agreement, these agreements are introducing new WTO-plus rules for services and investment, addressing emerging issues, such as electronic commerce and the role of state-owned enterprises, and introducing whole new subject areas to agreements. There is deep interest in understanding the impact of these new developments, both on the part of policy makers in countries that are party to the negotiations and in countries that are excluded, but which will nonetheless be affected by the new standards and rules. Traditional quantitative trade models are being adapted to provide comprehensive answers. This paper reviews these models and considers the extent to which they capture the full effects of the new age agreements. We find that the most comprehensive approach to modelling the mega-regionals is to employ a Computable General Equilibrium model of the type used for multi-sector, multi-region trade analysis. These are the only models with sufficient structural features to capture the main focus areas of the mega-regionals, namely services, investment, and the new -- behind the border‖ issues, while still covering the traditional areas of liberalization, such as tariffs and at least some features of agricultural trade. However, given the wide range of CGE models with different features, inevitably the impact of mega-regionals is probably best captured by meta-analysis of a suite of CGE-based studies, drawing on satellite models for additional structural detail and on sufficient statistics estimates as reality checks.

The major area of activity in international trade regulation is currently within the mega-regional trade negotiations - the Trans-Pacific Partnership, the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership, the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership, and the Trade in Services Agreement. These negotiations have important implications for excluded parties, including East African economies, which are themselves engaged in mega-regional negotiations within an African context - the Tripartite Free Trade Agreement talks, which aim to form a trade bloc of 23 countries, and the Continental Free Trade Area formally launched in June 2015. Preferential trade agreements generate well-understood spillovers on third parties, including the erosion of preferences under the World Trade Organization-authorized General System of Preferences and the competitive shock from the internal productivity improvements induced within the free trade zones. However, the ambitious regulatory agenda being addressed in the mega-regionals raises additional spillovers in the form of new and likely more demanding standards and procedural requirements to access global markets, as well as possibly new positive spillovers. This study addresses these issues both in qualitative and quantitative terms, with a focus on East Africa.

This book provides an in-depth analysis of "Mega-Regionals", the new generation of trans-regional free-trade agreements (FTAs) currently under negotiation, and their effect on the future of international economic law. The main focus centres on the EU-US Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP), the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) and the EU-Canada Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement (CETA), but the findings are also applicable to similar agreements under negotiation, such as the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP).The specific features of Mega-Regional Trade Agreements raise a number of issues with respect to their potential effect on the current system of international trade and investment law. These include the consequences of Mega-Regionals for the most-favoured-nation (MFN) principle, their relation to the multilateral system of the World Trade Organization (WTO), their democratic legitimacy and their interaction with existing bilateral investment treaties (BITs).The book is intended for academics and practitioners working in the field of international economic law.

Starting with Tinbergen (1962), quantifying the effects of regional trade agreements (RTAs) on international trade flows has always been among the most popular topics in the trade literature. Also not surprisingly, to estimate the effects of RTAs, most researchers and policy analysts have relied on the workhorse model of trade-the gravity equation. Over the past 60 years, there have been many important developments in the RTA literature, both in terms of better methods to quantify their effects, and also in terms of more and higher quality data. The objective of this paper is to trace the evolution of the methods and data developments in the RTA literature, from Tinbergen's very first exploration until today, and to critically evaluate their significance for our ability to measure the impact of RTAs (and other policies) on international trade.

Deep trade agreements (DTAs) cover not just trade but additional policy areas, such as international flows of investment and labor and the protection of intellectual property rights and the environment. Their goal is integration beyond trade or deep integration. These agreements matter for economic development. Their rules influence how countries (and hence, the people and firms that live and operate within them) transact, invest, work, and ultimately, develop. Trade and investment regimes determine the extent of economic integration, competition rules affect economic efficiency, intellectual property rights matter for innovation, and environmental and labor rules contribute to environmental and social outcomes. This Handbook provides the tools and data needed to analyze these new dimensions of integration and to assess the content and consequences of DTAs. The Handbook and the accompanying database are the result of collaboration between experts in different policy areas from academia and other international organizations, including the International Trade Centre (ITC), Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD), and World Trade Organization (WTO).

The mega regional trade agreements - the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP), the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP), and the Trade in Services Agreement (TISA) - will impact on non-parties through a combination of trade and investment diversion and the spillover effects from the emerging regulatory framework for global commerce that these agreements will effectively put in place. This paper reviews the changes to the regulation of international commerce that will be brought about by the mega regional trade agreements. Based on this review, it develops options for policy responses by those economies that are not members of the mega regional agreements.