"Trade, standards, and regional integration"

Faber, Gerrit and Roelfsema, Hein. (2001) "Trade, standards, and regional integration" . In European Union Studies Association (EUSA) > Biennial Conference > 2001 (7th), May 31-June 2, 2001, pages 27, Madison, Wisconsin.

Abstract

In this paper we argue that countries have strong incentives to harmonize policies more quickly in regional agreements than they do in a multilateral setting. The set up of this paper is as follows. First, in section 2 we discuss the role of standards in international trade negotiations in the GATT/WTO. Section 3 reviews the way the EC has achieved a high degree of harmonization of standards. In section 4 we discuss economic theories that indicate under which circumstances countries will be able to improve their social welfare by concluding a Standardization Union. Subsequently, we introduce the role of various political actors by introducing theories of regulatory blocs like the EU are the subject of section 5. Conclusions of the paper are presented in section 6.