This report examines pertinent issues at the interface between domestic policy objectives, technical regulations and agricultural trade. It also discusses approaches to measuring the trade impacts of food safety and other technical measures.

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).

This book brings together a collection of papers prepared for the Global Forum on Agriculture that took place at the OECD in December 2014.

Argues that prosperity has rarely, if ever, been achieved or sustained without trade. Trade alone, however, is not enough; policies targeting employment, education, health and other issues are also needed to promote well-being and tackle the challenges of a globalised economy.

Nontariff Measures and International Trade includes 20 chapters authored by John Beghin and co-authors over the last 20 years on the economics of quality-standard like nontariff measures in the context of international trade. This book provides a coherent and comprehensive treatment of these nontariff measures, from their measurement to their effects on trade and welfare. In Part I, the authors use different perspectives to make the case that, unlike tariffs, quality-standard like nontariff measures are complex to measure and analyze and do not easily lead to general policy prescriptions. Then, Part II contains contributions on measurements of welfare and trade effects of nontariff measures, accounting for potential market imperfections. Part III presents chapters on the potential protectionism of nontariff measures when they are used to favor some economic agents over society. The last part presents cases studies of nontariff measures in different industries, markets, and countries.

The proliferation and increased stringency of food safety and agricultural health standards is a source of concern among many developing countries. These standards are perceived as a barrier to the continued success of their exports of high-value agro-food products (including fish, horticultural, and other products), either because these countries lack the technical and administrative capacities needed for compliance or because these standards can be applied in a discriminatory or protectionist manner. Jaffee and Henson draw on available literature and work in progress to examine the underlying evidence related to the changing standards environment and its impact on existing and potential developing country exporters of high-value agricultural and food products. The evidence the authors present, while only partial, suggests that the picture for developing countries as a whole is not necessarily problematic and certainly less pessimistic than the mainstream "standards-as-barriers" perspective. Indeed, rising standards serve to accentuate underlying supply chain strengths and weaknesses and thus impact differently on the competitive position of individual countries and distinct market participants. Some countries and industries are even using high quality and safety standards to successfully (re- )position themselves in competitive global markets. This emphasizes the importance of considering the effects of food safety and agricultural health measures within the context of wider capacity constraints and underlying supply chain trends and drivers. The key question for developing countries is how to exploit their strengths and overcome their weaknesses such that they are gainers rather than losers in the emerging commercial and regulatory context. This paper--a product of the International Trade Department, Poverty Reduction and Economic Management Network--is part of a larger effort in the network to understand the challenges and opportunities facing developing countries associated with evolving international standards for food and other products.

The proliferation of international institutions with overlapping scope and authority over issue areas creates strategic dilemmas for all states. While African states are often considered marginalised in world politics and global markets, Michael Byron Nelson shows how coalitions can form a crucial part of African strategies to influence international institutions and achieve results. Building a bottom-up analysis of global governance, through legal analysis, content analysis, and in-depth interviews, Nelson illuminates institutional and coalition dynamics through case studies of three key areas - food safety, intellectual property, and agricultural trade. He highlights the difficulties encountered by coalitions attempting to navigate institutional systems, emerging from institutional thickness (increasing the number of institutions involved) and integration (increasing the formal linkages between those institutions). Finally, Nelson shows how increasing the hierarchy of an institutional system, by creating a focal point on a single institution, can make coordination easier for coalitions.