Trading Up: Consumer and Environmental Regulation in a Global Economy - Hardcover

When I teach international economics, students invariably ask me how to distinguish a protectionist barrier to trade from a legitimate health rule. This book provides a rich collection of cases to show how international trade agreements and their dispute settlement procedures have answered this question. The book centers around the question of how increased economic integration affects consumer safety...The results of the theoretical models are supplemented through rigorous empirical studies. The endnotes of each chapter provide crucial information to readers. The study is comprehensive and well-documented with an exhaustive list of references. The author provides a European perspective on the [Federal Reserve's] exchange rate policies in comparison to those of the Bundesbank's...This book is well-written, interesting and informative, and particularly good at describing how trade and regulatory disputes have been resolved. Teachers of international, environmental, or consumer economics

Health, safety and environmental regulations have been traditionally perceived as distinct entities from trade policy, yet today they have become intertwined on a global scale. In this work, David Vogel integrates environmental, consumer and trade policy, and challenges the conventional wisdom that trade liberalization and agreements to promote free trade invariably undermine national health, safety amd environmental standards. Vogel demonstrates that liberal trade policies often produce precisely the opposite effect: that of strengthening regulatory standards. A comprehensive account of trade and regulation on a global scale, this book anlayzes the regulatory dimensions of all major international and regional trade agreements and treaties, including GATT, NAFTA, the Free Trade Agreement between Canada and the United States, and the treaties that created the European Community and Union. He explores in depth some of the most important trade and regulatory conflicts, including the GATT tuna-dolphin dispute, the EC's beef hormone ban, the Danish bottle case, and the debate in the United States over the regulatory implications of both NAFTA and GATT. This work unravels the increasingly important and contentious relationship between trade and environmental health and safety standards, paying particular attention to the politics that underlie trade and regulatory linkages. "Trading Up" should be useful reading for the business community, policymakers, environmentalists, consumer interest groups, political scientists, lawyers and economists.