ABSTRACT

The creation of an appropriate trade regime is of central importance to any country but particularly to a small open economy such as the putative Palestinian state. This chapter, which analyses the interactions between trade regimes, transactions costs and labour flows, is both insightful and provoking. It illustrates very clearly the tension between the creation of institutions which resonate with aspirations of economic and political sovereignty on the one hand, and the constraints imposed by the reality and inertia of current patterns of economic behaviour on the other.