Balancing policy space versus policy constraints? A critial legal analysis of WTO disciplines on subsidies and countervailing measures.

This postdoctoral research serves a double objective. First, I aim at publishing a book on the law and economics of subsidy disciplines elaborated under the World Trade Organization (WTO). This book project focalizes on the question whether the set of legal disciplines, elaborated in the Agreement on Subsidies and Countervailing Duties and the Agreement on Agriculture, finds an adequate balance between policy space left to national governments and policy constraints imposed upon them. Insights of economic and political-economy theory are integrated in order to normatively assess this legal framework as interpreted by a vast amount of case law. Second, two topical case studies will be further explored. A first case study assesses the appropriateness of the WTO framework in light of governments responses to the economic crisis. A second and related case study examines the recent call to link those crisis-induced government interventions to the need to elicit a green revolution. Again, this calls for a number of government interventions generating complex questions on their WTO compatibility. Overall, this case study will address whether the WTO framework offers sufficient policy space to elicit such a green revolution.

Keywords:Countervailing duties, Subsidies, World Trade Organization, Export credit support

Disciplines:Law