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It was in 1976 when, in the case of Handyside v. the United Kingdom, , the European Court of Human Rights held that the European Convention on Human Rights "leaves to the Contracting States a margin of appreciation". n". Forty-five years later, in 2021, Protocol No. 15 entered into force and incorporated the "margin of appreciation" n" into the Preamble of the ECHR. For a long time, the doctrine has been considered a unique feature of the European human rights system, consistently ignored or explicitly rejected by other international adjudicators. This article aims to assess whether the recent international judicial practice still confirms such a conclusion, or whether the margin has migrated across the case law of different international courts and is, nowadays, a doctrine that can be applied to the assessment of the scope and content of international obligations and to the review of compliance with such obligations in general.

International economic relations are often compared to a sports game. Within this game, states and private companies compete for influence, market shares, and resources. Competition is unfair when the field has a slope. In keeping with this sports analogy, the 'game' of international economic relations depends on a level playing field (LPF). International economic exchange is fair only when this playing field lacks a slope. This article argues that the LPF in international economic law does not require fully equalizing the regulatory burden across market actors, even when incorporating sustainability considerations. Instead, whether regulatory divergences lead to an uneven playing field depends on the nature, intensity, and source of such divergences, and varies on a case-by-case basis. This is important because countries have increasingly introduced LPF measures that seek to achieve comparable regulatory burdens. LPF measures cover a wide range of matters, including environmental and labour standards, subsidies, competition law, and state-owned enterprises.

Trade liberalization has enabled China to become a global manufacturing hub. However, an increasing focus on pollutant emissions has accompanied China's rapid economic growth. This paper uses the Annual Survey of Industrial Firms and the Annual Energy Survey of Industrial Firms from 1998 to 2007 to identify the effects of trade liberalization in final goods and intermediate goods on pollutant emissions of Chinese manufacturing enterprises. The difference-in-difference method is used to analyze the data, with China's accession to the World Trade Organization serving as an exogenous policy shock that brought trade liberalization. The paper's findings indicate the following: (1) Trade liberalization has reduced the tariffs on final goods, which has led to a notable reduction in the intensity of pollutant emissions from Chinese manufacturing firms. (2) Trade liberalization in intermediate goods, meanwhile, has led to a significant increase in the pollutant emission intensity of manufacturing firms. However, the emission reduction effect observed in final goods is more pronounced. (3) The difference-in-difference-in-difference method was used to examine the heterogeneity of the pollutant emission effect of trade liberalization across manufacturing firms. Our analysis revealed that trade liberalization has significantly enhanced the pollutant emission intensity of state-owned enterprises while exhibiting no significant effect on foreign invested enterprises. Furthermore, trade liberalization has intensified pollutant emissions among exporting firms.

Over the last decade, a significant concern in the energy market has been the decline in the USA's oil imports and fall in energy prices. In this context, we investigate the impact of the shale revolution in the USA on oil prices and examine its potential replicability in other shale-rich countries. Employing the Auto Regressive Distributive Lag Model (ARDL), the influence of the shale energy boom on WTI oil prices has been quantified, using monthly time series data from 2008 to 2019. The results reveal that shale oil output has no effect on oil prices in the short run. However, we found a significant negative impact on oil prices in the long run, as shale development enhances the global energy supply. Additionally, we found that the shale rich countries lack the infrastructure, financing, and have limited property rights, which hampers their chances of replicating the success of shale development in USA. We recommend that countries trying to develop shale resources invest in factors that led to the shale revolution in the USA. Additionally, as low oil prices will reduce future investment in shale oil and gas exploration, the US government should offer adequate incentives for private firms to remain competitive in the energy sector and continue enjoying the benefits of the shale revolution.

The article is analyzing the latest trends in China's participation in the integration processes in the Asia-Pacific region and their determining factors. The evolution of China's approaches to integration processes in the region in key areas of trade, economic and investment interaction is considered. China's integration cooperation with the Asia-Pacific countries is developing within three main multilateral formats, including the forum of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC), the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP) and the Comprehensive Progressive Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP). The One Belt, One Road Initiative occupies a special place in China's policy regarding integration processes in the Asia-Pacific region. The paper analyzes the directions of development of these formats, the nature of their interaction with each other, the prospects for the integration of the Asia-Pacific countries and China's participation in these processes. In connection with the stalled rounds of WTO trade negotiations and the postponement of the creation of a free trade area within the framework of the APEC, China's participation in the RCEP strengthens its regional position while China has now become the leading trading partner for the countries participating in the agreement. ASEAN countries' trade with China exceeds their trade with the United States. The article also considers trends and problems in the implementation of the Chinese One Belt, One Road Initiative. Among the problems are the discrepancies between the interests of the parties involved, the lack of investment resources, political factors. At the same time, the flexible nature of the Chinese Initiative, the absence of strict requirements for participants, and their interest in the project allows the One Belt, One Road to become the world's largest cooperation platform operating on the principles of an open mega-partnership.

This article examines the evolution of State-owned Enterprise (SOE) rules in the post- Trans-Pacific Partnership era, and identifies their overall tendency to fall either within the European Union (EU) or United States approach. Although both approaches exhibit a shift of SOE rules from a "market structure-based" towards an "ownership-based" model, or, more precisely, towards a broader "control-based" model, they diverge in key, conduct-related, obligations, which may frustrate their prospects for future convergence. This article concludes that, overall, the EU approach seems more effective, not only due to its more competition-oriented, laxer obligations as well as there being more room for exceptions regarding "Non-discriminatory Treatment and Commercial Considerations", but also on account of its more non-discriminatory, flexible and inclusive stance in handling "Undue Competitive Advantages or Disadvantages" considerations. In order to make international SOE rules practically more feasible and effective, especially for rules to "make sense" in the current global order - that is to say, with the inclusion of China within their scope - this article suggests that further WTO "experimentation" to complement the current "soft way" of the EU approach is advisable in order to get a better picture of China's Commercial SOEs.

Historically, the United States assertion of extraterritoriality under its export control laws haselicited considerable scholarly discourse. In recent years and with the perceived nationalsecurity threat posed by a burgeoning China, the US has dramatically expanded a set ofextraterritorial rules in its existing export control restrictions. This article evaluates suchexpansion of export control extraterritoriality in the context of waning trade multilateralism.It first provides a doctrinal examination of the development of extraterritoriality in US exportcontrol, focusing on the recent intensificationof US-China technology decoupling, exemplifiedthrough the expansion of end-use control and extraterritorial jurisdiction over US persons.Then, by drawing upon recent literature on geoeconomic trade law, the article argues that arevitalizedpriorityonsecurity-orientedtrade policy making will justify this expansion ofexport control extraterritoriality together with ally-based enforcement exception rules.Nonetheless, expansion of export control extraterritoriality will easily be a slippery slope,potentially initiating retaliatory cycles. Without a multilateral solution, it risks a dramaticrealignment of international trade into blocks of allies and/or regions, thereby underminingdecades of achievements in neo-liberal trade andhurting its leadership in a rules-based order.The article concludes by reflecting on remaining multilateralist avenues to rule on exportextraterritoriality when new trade dispute arises, in light of a few recent WTO DSB reformproposals

Borges and colleagues' article entitled "More Pain, More Gain! The Delivery of COVID-19 Vaccines and the Pharmaceutical Industry's Role in Widening the Access Gap," analyzes the role of pharmaceutical companies in providing equitable access to COVID-19 vaccines. They concluded that with the failure of COVID-19 Vaccine Global Access (COVAX), the health gaps have widened due to the profit-driven pharmaceutical sector. In this commentary, we highlight the role of COVAX and its attempt to bridge some access gaps since its inception and the need for reforms in policy-making and global health governance. The commentary highlights the role of global health diplomacy in promoting equity and negotiating the Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) waiver for COVID-19 vaccines at the World Trade Organization (WTO) thereby promoting global solidarity, global partnerships, access to medicine and health products, and the right to health. We conclude that political prioritization is the key to balance the impact of profit-driven pharma industry and addressing the needs of low- and middle-income countries (LMICs).

Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) is an important topic in the intersections between businesses and the society, being used to address the negative effects of corporate and business activities on the society and environment. Regardless of the variants of its definition and forms, CSR has been used as a form of regulation in many countries including Indonesia. Indonesia's mining industry has a unique CSR regulation in the sense that it is backed by sectoral mining regulations used to protect certain uniquely defined societal interests. Since Indonesia's mining regulation prescribes certain manners of mineral production, mandatory CSR obligations have been created for industry players that will have to be read in the light of public regulation and people's welfare orientations. This paper finds that the expansive use of CSR particularly in the mining regulatory framework will create implications for the international legal commitments undertaken by Indonesia including those under the World Trade Organization (WTO).

This paper studies quality upgrading to escape competition from low-wage countries and proposes a new channel that does not rely on access to new inputs or markets. Informed by Peruvian apparel firms' response to China's WTO accession, I introduce factor specificity in a multi-product-firm model. Profitability losses due to competition in low-quality segments induce firms to reallocate specific factors to produce high-quality varieties for high-income countries. Gains from this channel are large. Using an observed quality measure, I show that import competition substantially increases domestic firms' exports and high-quality export shares. Firms also reduce prices, resulting in additional welfare gains.