ABSTRACT
The regulation of international trade follows two different modalities. On the one hand, world trade is regulated multilaterally within the framework of the World Trade Organization (WTO). On the other hand, during the last 15 years there has been an incredible proliferation of Regional Trade Agreements (RTAs), also known as preferential trade agreements (PTAs). According to the most recent statistic data published by the WTO, as of July 1, 2016, 635 RTAs have been notifi ed to the GATT/WTO. At the same date, 423 agreements were already in force. The main goal of PTAs is to establish a higher degree of economic integration and trade liberalization among the participant countries than the one that has already been achieved by the same countries within the WTO legal system. 1
The traditional economic approaches to PTAs have focused mainly on two aspects. A fi rst approach, which can be defi ned as “static analysis,” moves from the assumption that these agreements mainly deal with reciprocal tariff cuts and border measures and studies the trade diversion and trade creation effects. 2 A second approach, which is commonly defi ned as
* The author wishes to thank Prof. Paolo Davide Farah for the invitation to contribute to the present book. The views adopted in the present article represent the personal opinions of the author and not the position of Crowell & Moring LLP.
