Fair Trade and Harmonization: Prerequisites for Free Trade? (Volume 2) - Legal Analysis

The original contributions in Fair Trade and Harmonization investigate the growing conflict between free trade policies and the domestic environmental, labor, and antitrust policies of individual nations. They clarify the issues and offer a critical economic and legal analysis of the contending positions along with a series of proposals for resolving or reconciling them. Taken together, the two volumes present a comprehensive catalog of the government actions that are causing conflict in these areas and a critique of the existing scholarly literature on the subject. In each area, the contributors extensively discuss and analyze forms of policy harmonization and the arguments for and against it, with a goal of better understanding as a constant throughout. A more particular goal, however is to take a sober second look at, and impose some restraint upon, the growing chorus of demands to push aside the existing trade institution (the World Trade Organization) in the name of social policies, especially those regarding environmental and labor rights.

Contributors
Volume 2: Kenneth W. Abbott, Richard D. Boltuck, Ronald A. Cass, Daniel A. Farber, Daniel J. Gifford, Brian Hindley, Robert E. Hudec, Brian A. Langille, Virginia A. Leary, Mitsuo Matsushita, Frieder Roessler

Jagdish N. Bhagwati is University Professor of Economics, Law, and International Relations at Columbia University and former Adviser to the Director General of GATT, Arthur Dunkel. He is the author (with Arvind Panagariya) of Why Growth Matters: How Economic Growth in India Reduced Poverty and the Lessons for Other Developing Countries.