IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/wbk/wbrwps/1429.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

The World Trade Organization's agreement on government procurement : expanding disciplines, declining membership?

Author

Listed:
  • Hoekman, Bernard
  • Mavroidis, Petros C.

Abstract

The authors analyze the new Government Procurement Agreement (GPA) that was negotiated between a subset of General Agreement on Tariffs an Trade (GATT) members in the Uruguay Round, focusing especially on the expansion of coverage to services and on the strengthening of enforcement mechanisms. Coverage objective were substantially achieved, although commitments containmany exceptions for services. The transparency of signatories'procurement practices was enhanced and enforcement provisions were strengthened, particularly by the introduction of a bid-protest challenge mechanism, which allows private parties (firms) to invoke the Agreement before national courts. (A potential problem: domestic courts could produce divergent interpretations of the GPA). Unlike most of the other Tokyo Round codes - for example, the agreements on technical barriers to trade (standards), import licensing, customs valuation, subsidies, and antidumping - the GPA could not be"multilateralized."Its disciplines apply only to World Trade Organization (WTO) members that have signed it. Public procurement represents a major source of demand for goods and services in most countries. Getting domestic procurement policies"right"can therefore have major effects on welfare. And improving developing countries'access to global procurement markets could help induce governments to adopt multilateral rules, if those could be shown to be in their interests. The authors explore why only a limited number of countries have signed the GPA. They suggest the pursuit of tariffication as one avenue through which the Agreement might be expanded to cover all WTO members. In the process, the GPA could be improved economically by eliminating current provisions that allow for measures with quota-like effects, and by weakening incentives to seek"absolute"sector-by-sector reciprocity.

Suggested Citation

  • Hoekman, Bernard & Mavroidis, Petros C., 1995. "The World Trade Organization's agreement on government procurement : expanding disciplines, declining membership?," Policy Research Working Paper Series 1429, The World Bank.
  • Handle: RePEc:wbk:wbrwps:1429
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www-wds.worldbank.org/external/default/WDSContentServer/WDSP/IB/1995/03/01/000009265_3970311121546/Rendered/PDF/multi0page.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Deardorff, Alan V., 1987. "Why do governments prefer nontariff barriers?," Carnegie-Rochester Conference Series on Public Policy, Elsevier, vol. 26(1), pages 191-216, January.
    2. Bernard M. Hoekman & Petros C. Mavroidis, 1994. "Competition, Competition Policy and the GATT," The World Economy, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 17(2), pages 121-150, March.
    3. Vousden,Neil, 1990. "The Economics of Trade Protection," Cambridge Books, Cambridge University Press, number 9780521346696, September.
    4. McAfee, R. Preston & McMillan, John, 1989. "Government procurement and international trade," Journal of International Economics, Elsevier, vol. 26(3-4), pages 291-308, May.
    5. Patrick Messerlin, 1981. "The political economy of protectionism : The bureaucratic case," Review of World Economics (Weltwirtschaftliches Archiv), Springer;Institut für Weltwirtschaft (Kiel Institute for the World Economy), vol. 117(3), pages 469-496, September.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Aaditya Mattoo, 1996. "The Government Procurement Agreement: Implications of Economic Theory," The World Economy, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 19(6), pages 695-720, November.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Weck-Hannemann, Hannelore, 1989. "Protectionism in direct democracy," Discussion Papers, Series II 79, University of Konstanz, Collaborative Research Centre (SFB) 178 "Internationalization of the Economy".
    2. Hanaa Kheir-El-Din & Sherine El-Shawarby, 2000. "Trade and Foreign Exchange Regime in Egypt," Working Papers 2034, Economic Research Forum, revised 11 Sep 2000.
    3. Aaditya Mattoo, 1996. "The Government Procurement Agreement: Implications of Economic Theory," The World Economy, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 19(6), pages 695-720, November.
    4. Dipankar Purkayastha, 1999. "Patriarchal Monopoly and Economic Development," Feminist Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 5(2), pages 61-78.
    5. Denise Eby Konan & Keith E. Maskus, 2012. "Preferential Trade and Welfare with Differentiated Products," Review of International Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 20(5), pages 884-892, November.
    6. Kym Anderson & Johan Swinnen, 2008. "Distortions to Agricultural Incentives in Europe's Transition Economies," World Bank Publications - Books, The World Bank Group, number 6502.
    7. Jingfeng Lu, 2009. "Auction design with opportunity cost," Economic Theory, Springer;Society for the Advancement of Economic Theory (SAET), vol. 38(1), pages 73-103, January.
    8. Joseph Francois & Ian Wooton, 2010. "Market Structure and Market Access," The World Economy, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 33(7), pages 873-893, July.
    9. Burguet Roberto & Perry Martin K, 2007. "Bribery and Favoritism by Auctioneers in Sealed-Bid Auctions," The B.E. Journal of Theoretical Economics, De Gruyter, vol. 7(1), pages 1-27, June.
    10. Marion, Justin, 2007. "Are bid preferences benign? The effect of small business subsidies in highway procurement auctions," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 91(7-8), pages 1591-1624, August.
    11. Wolfgang Kerber & Oliver Budzinski, "undated". "Towards a Differentiated Analysis of Competition of Competition Laws," German Working Papers in Law and Economics 2004-1-1090, Berkeley Electronic Press.
    12. Lilyan E. Fulginiti & Richard K. Perrin, 1995. "An Allais Measure of Production Sector Waste Due to Quotas," American Journal of Agricultural Economics, Agricultural and Applied Economics Association, vol. 77(4), pages 865-874.
    13. Melitz, Marc J., 2005. "When and how should infant industries be protected?," Journal of International Economics, Elsevier, vol. 66(1), pages 177-196, May.
    14. Arve, Malin, 2014. "Procurement and predation: Dynamic sourcing from financially constrained suppliers," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 120(C), pages 157-168.
    15. Todd Kaplan & David Wettstein, 2015. "The optimal design of rewards in contests," Review of Economic Design, Springer;Society for Economic Design, vol. 19(4), pages 327-339, December.
    16. Jehiel, Philippe & Lamy, Laurent, 2014. "On discrimination in procurement auctions," CEPR Discussion Papers 9790, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    17. Matthew T. Cole & Ronald B. Davies, 2014. "Foreign bidders going once, going twice... Protection in government procurement auctions," Working Papers 201401, School of Economics, University College Dublin.
    18. Marius BRÜLHART & Federico TRIONFETTI, 2000. "Public Expenditure and International Specialisation," Cahiers de Recherches Economiques du Département d'économie 00.23, Université de Lausanne, Faculté des HEC, Département d’économie.
    19. Coxhead, Ian A., 1997. "Induced innovation and land degradation in developing country agriculture," Australian Journal of Agricultural and Resource Economics, Australian Agricultural and Resource Economics Society, vol. 41(3), pages 1-28.
    20. Melliger, Marc, 2023. "Quantifying technology skewness in European multi-technology auctions and the effect of design elements and other driving factors," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 175(C).

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:wbk:wbrwps:1429. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Roula I. Yazigi (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/dvewbus.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.