Prior Agreements Research Articles

Punctuating the equilibrium: A lens to understand energy and environmental policy changes

Punctuating the equilibrium: A lens to understand energy and environmental policy changes

Ethics in international health research: a perspective from the developing world.

Health research plays a pivotal role in addressing inequities in health and human development, but to achieve these objectives the research must be based on sound scientific and ethical principles. Although it is accepted that ethics play a central role in health research in developing countries, much of the recent debate has focused on controversies surrounding internationally sponsored research and has taken place largely without adequate participation of the developing countries. The relationship between ethical guidelines and regulations, and indigenously sponsored and public health research has not been adequately explored. For example, while the fundamental principles of ethical health research, such as community participation, informed consent, and shared benefits and burdens, remain sacrosanct other issues, such as standards of care and prior agreements, merit greater public debate within developing countries. In particular, the relationship of existing ethical guidelines to epidemiological and public health research merits further exploration. In order to support health research in developing countries that is both relevant and meaningful, the focus must be on developing health research that promotes equity and on developing local capacity in bioethics. Only through such proactive measures can we address the emerging ethical dilemmas and challenges that globalization and the genomics revolution will bring in their wake.

The Economic Potential of an India-US Free Trade Agreement

This paper explores the economic implication of a potential free trade agreement between India and the United States. The overall impacts are likely to be positive for the United States and India. While gains from trade creation would be offset by trade diversion on the import side, both countries would gain from improved access on the export side. The United States is likely to gain largely through terms of trade improvements for its goods and services, as initial protection in India remains relatively high. India would experience an expansion of exports and output, particularly in textiles and apparel. The paper explores how the effects of an India-United States free trade agreement might be affected by prior free trade agreements. Adding an India-United States free trade agreement to prior agreements would tend to bring additional welfare benefits to both countries. India would also gain substantially if it concluded a free trade agreement with the United States and then extended it to other partners. The results suggest that an India-United States free trade agreement might become a building block toward more liberal trade regimes.

Reducing the number of fetuses in a pregnancy: providers' and patients' views of challenges.

How do patients and providers perceive and make decisions about possible reductions of multi-fetal pregnancies? Physicians may be transferring additional embryos, assuming that patients will later undergo reduction if need be; but decisions to reduce pregnancies are difficult for patients, who may agree to undergo the procedure in advance and later renege. Implanting more than one embryo increases the likelihood that at least one embryo will successfully lead to a child but also that the patient may end up with twins or higher-order multiple births. In-depth interviews of ~1 h each were conducted with 37 ART providers and patients (17 physicians, 10 other health providers and 10 patients) and systematically analyzed. The telephone interviews explored the participants' views and decisions regarding pregnancy reduction. The answers were analyzed systematically. Providers may be transferring additional embryos, thinking that doing so will increase the likelihood of a 'take home baby' and that the patients could undergo reductions, if need be, to avoid the risks and complications of twins or multiple births. Yet patients often appear to have difficulty confronting the prospect of fetal reduction and/or renege on prior agreements to undergo the procedure. Providers should thus be wary and exceedingly careful about these situations. The sample size was sufficient for qualitative research designed to elucidate the issues and themes that emerge, but not for statistically analyzing how various groups may differ (e.g. physicians versus patients). Future studies should investigate these issues with larger samples. These data, the first to examine how IVF providers and patients view and approach decisions regarding the reduction of fetuses, suggest several complications and dilemmas. This information has critical implications for future practice, guidelines, research and education of providers, patients, insurers, policymakers and others. Funding was provided by grant #UL1 RR024156 from the National Center for Research Resources, the Greenwall Foundation and the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation. There are no conflicts of interest to declare.

Local Liability

On February 4, 2016, the United States and eleven other countries signed the Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP) — the most far-reaching free trade agreement since the World Trade Organization’s founding in 1995. The TPP’s potential ratification promises to be one of the major fights during the last months of the Obama Presidency. Unlike most prior trade agreements, the TPP’s purported benefits do not come primarily from reductions in tariffs paid on goods at the border. Instead, they flow from assumptions that so-called non-tariff barriers — such as discrimination against foreign investors or service providers — will fall significantly under TPP. Yet to date unnoticed among the TPP’s 30 chapters, schedules, and annexes are provisions that exempt state, provincial, and local measures from compliance with many of the agreement’s nondiscrimination rules. Under the TPP, subnational governments such as California or Ontario — governments with substantial regulatory authority over regional economies much larger than many national economies — may indefinitely continue existing discriminatory policies against foreign investors or foreign service providers. These exemptions represent the multilateralization of a trend underway for a number of years in U.S. treaty practice: efforts to eliminate the federal government’s liability for subnational action that the federal government often cannot control and of which it is frequently unaware. Indeed, 41% of the claims brought under the investor-state dispute settlement (ISDS) provisions of the 1994 North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) have challenged subnational government action. These exemptions also reflect a growing pushback against ISDS. Contrary to U.S. treaty practice and ISDS’s critics, this Article argues that foreign investors or aggrieved trading partners should be able to make their claims directly against subnational governments such as California, rather than only against national governments like the United States. I make the case by presenting and analyzing international liability rules for local action. Governments use three kinds of local liability rules: 1) immunity, under which neither the subnational nor national governments are answerable under international law for the actions of a subnational government; 2) vicarious liability, under which nations are liable for the actions of their subnational units even if they do not control them as a matter of domestic law; and 3) direct liability, under which a claimant’s case is brought directly against the offending subnational government. Vicarious liability is the default rule under the international law of state responsibility. However, immunity — the rule under an increasing number of economic treaties, including TPP’s investment and services chapters — is on the rise. Direct liability is rare, but exists in certain investment agreements and applies to the European Union. The choice among these liability rules is the most important front in efforts to reconcile a robust federalism with the increasing importance of local governments to international affairs — an ongoing battle in the United States, the European Union, and other federal nations. Direct liability best achieves the twin goals of fostering local governance and international cooperation for three reasons. First, direct liability would force subnational governments to internalize the costs of their actions, thereby deterring violations. Under vicarious liability, the costs of violations are born by the national government, and under immunity they are born by the claimant who is left with no recourse. Second, a move to direct liability would have beneficial distributional consequences, ensuring that powerful federal nations do not force liberalization in developing countries while protecting discriminatory practices within their own countries. Third, a move to direct liability recognizes the considerably more important role subnational governments play in international affairs today. From climate change and renewable energy to international trade, subnational governments are incredibly active in tackling matters of international concern. They should also bear responsibility for their actions.

Modeling Human Ad Hoc Coordination

Whether in groups of humans or groups of computer agents, collaboration is most effective between individuals who have the ability to coordinate on a joint strategy for collective action. However, in general a rational actor will only intend to coordinate if that actor believes the other group members have the same intention. This circular dependence makes rational coordination difficult in uncertain environments if communication between actors is unreliable and no prior agreements have been made. An important normative question with regard to coordination in these ad hoc settings is therefore how one can come to believe that other actors will coordinate, and with regard to systems involving humans, an important empirical question is how humans arrive at these expectations. We introduce an exact algorithm for computing the infinitely recursive hierarchy of graded beliefs required for rational coordination in uncertain environments, and we introduce a novel mechanism for multiagent coordination that uses it. Our algorithm is valid in any environment with a finite state space, and extensions to certain countably infinite state spaces are likely possible. We test our mechanism for multiagent coordination as a model for human decisions in a simple coordination game using existing experimental data. We then explore via simulations whether modeling humans in this way may improve human-agent collaboration.

The BWC Gray Area: Locating the Blurry Line of Defining Biological Weapons

Abstract The member states bound by the Biological Weapons Convention (BWC) have committed to not produce, stock pile, or use biological weapons, but finding the line between what is a biological weapon and what is justified by “prophylactic, protective or other peaceful purposes” is difficult with the broad wording of the convention. In a world of quickly emerging technology, the gray area created by the broad exceptions to what constitutes a BWC biological weapon produces ever-changing security risks and public policy considerations. Despite the BWC’s attempt to strengthen prohibition on biological weapons of prior agreements, a large exception is carved out for the three justified uses, which hinges on the intent and purpose of the actor. The three permitted purposes are not defined, and there is no objective test for determining the intention of the actor.

Avoiding or restricting defectors in public goods games?

When creating a public good, strategies or mechanisms are required to handle defectors. We first show mathematically and numerically that prior agreements with posterior compensations provide a strategic solution that leads to substantial levels of cooperation in the context of public goods games, results that are corroborated by available experimental data. Notwithstanding this success, one cannot, as with other approaches, fully exclude the presence of defectors, raising the question of how they can be dealt with to avoid the demise of the common good. We show that both avoiding creation of the common good, whenever full agreement is not reached, and limiting the benefit that disagreeing defectors can acquire, using costly restriction mechanisms, are relevant choices. Nonetheless, restriction mechanisms are found the more favourable, especially in larger group interactions. Given decreasing restriction costs, introducing restraining measures to cope with public goods free-riding issues is the ultimate advantageous solution for all participants, rather than avoiding its creation.

Natural Resource Wealth Optimization: A Review of Fiscal Regimes and Equitable Agreements for Petroleum and Mineral Extraction Projects

This review highlights the challenges of fiscal system optimization considering both the host government and extraction company perspectives. Countries around the world face an arduous task in determining the optimal fiscal system to maximize the capture of economic rents of natural resource extraction activities. The extraction industry is equally challenged to meet global commodity demand because the capital investments required for developing new hydrocarbon fields and ore mines are on the rise, while tax takes on extraction activities tend to rise too in many frontier jurisdictions. Normal profit must remain for the extraction companies, and returns must be large enough to replace for resource depletion. Companies use the benefits of resources produced in one country to finance capital investments for future field development in another country. One viewpoint is that profits are expatriated to the detriment of the host country and to the benefit of another country or the world supply chain as a whole. Another viewpoint is that all resource holders benefit because a foreign entity always starts in a new resource holding nation by investing in the development of an oil field or solid mineral mine using the profits from previous projects in other countries. A key question is What is a fair taxation regime for natural resource extraction in a particular geological setting and a given geographical location, taking into account subsurface uncertainty about the quality and volume of the resource, infrastructure needs and proximity to the world’s major markets and trade centers? Tax distortion could go both ways: either incentivize, attract and stimulate or des-incentivize, repel and deter resource development. Additional factors to consider are external uncertainties such as political and fiscal stability, sovereign risk and even local weather conditions (mostly in offshore and Arctic petroleum operations). Governments must tax the upstream rents of petroleum and mineral resources, but not to the level that suppresses extraction activities. All stakeholders want at least an equitable share of the profits. Defining what is equitable is a matter of intensive negotiations, renegotiation of prior agreements and sometimes litigation and international arbitration. Several case studies, covering both petroleum and solid mineral extraction projects, are included to highlight the key points involved in fiscal policies designed to optimize the utility of geological resource endowments. For example, the offshore tax regime employed in the US pivots the trade-offs between fiscal incentives and long-term resource supply to ensure energy security. This review concludes with a call for further research.

ETA ceasefire: Armed struggle vs. political practice in Basque nationalism

In October 2011, the Basque armed organization ETA announced an end to its activities. This article aims at studying the reasons leading up to this unilateral decision which had been taken without prior negotiations or agreements. To this end, a large part of existing bibliography on the subject was consulted and most of the documents released by ETA in recent years, including those for internal use, were also reviewed. In our opinion, ETA reached this decision on the basis of two conclusions and an overall view of the state of affairs. The first of these conclusions found that the two main channels opened up in 1975 to reach its tactical goals, namely, negotiation with Spain and a national front, had been fully exploited. The second concerns the great difficulty in continuing to defend armed struggle on the grounds that it helps reinforce these two channels. Moreover, the belief that it is possible to make greater advances without, rather than with, armed activity, was widespread, paradoxical as that might seem. Forty years after its political positioning with respect to post-Franco Spain, convinced that both channels had been exhausted, and of its limited legitimacy to explore new ones in its capacity as a political movement, ETA reassessed the situation, and once again changed its discourse and practice, with an aim to attaining its strategic goals.

Valuing Standard Essential Patents in the Knowledge Economy

This paper comparatively examined the valuation methodologies put forward and accepted in four recent FRAND cases adjudicated in the US in 2013-14 and found a link to the business models (i.e. value logics) employed by the actors and the type of standards involved. This indicates that the value of standard essential patents (SEPs) may be dependent on the market structure under which standards are developed. Additionally, valuation models based on prior license agreements seem to currently produce higher valuations of SEPs, everything else equal. However, a lack of agreement by the different courts regarding similar valuation methods indicates the value of SEPs still lacks consensus on both legal and economic grounds, especially in relation to new knowledge-based business models and norms. This suggests that policy makers (both within SSOs and government) should take pause in further defining IPR policies and adopting new patent regulations without a deeper understanding of the potential impact to both dynamic and static economic efficiency in respect to an emerging new division of innovation labor and knowledge-based business models. This is particularly relevant as the studied cases confirm that lack of empirical evidence that perceived problems such as patent holdup and royalty stacking are more than a merely contractual/transactional phenomenon that can't well be addressed on a case-by-case basis by the courts.

Building agreements upon agreements: The European Union and grand strategy

What explains the European Union’s successes and failures in producing a grand strategy? Conceptualizing grand strategy as a composite commonplace linking together understandings of scene, agent, purpose and means (tetrad), I contend that the European Union has a grand strategy. In the early 1990s, advocates succeeded in institutionalizing the diffusion strategy. A decade later, however, the advocates of the European Security Strategy failed to do so. My explanation of this descriptive finding focuses on the constellation of prior agreements on the components of the tetrad. In both cases, widely taken-for-granted agreements on a recently shifted scene (security environment) provided openings for the advocates. But only the advocates of diffusion had the opportunity to work with equally widely taken-for-granted agreements on agent (identity), purpose (interest) and means (power). The advocates for the European Security Strategy, by contrast, were lacking such a favourable social context. Borrowing from rhetorical studies, this study makes a threefold contribution to the study of grand strategy. It moves beyond the literature’s statism; shows that grand strategy is constituted by interpretations not just of power and interest, but also of the security environment and identity; and clarifies that explanations of the making of grand strategy need to inquire into the making of agreements rather than merely the interplay of material forces. My findings that the European Union has a grand strategy and came to adopt it by building a new agreement upon already-existing ones also have implications for the study of European Union foreign policy and International Relations Theory.

Member States Prior Agreements and Newly EU Attributed Competence: What Lesson from Foreign Investment

Among the many changes introduced by the Treaty of Lisbon, one of the most significant ones is the introduction of a new EU exclusive competence concerning foreign investment, as part of the common commercial policy. The exercise of such competence has given rise to several controversial issues, in particular as regards the status and the future of Member States Bilateral Investment Treaties (BITs) concluded before the attribution of this new competence to the EU. This article considers whether Member States BITs can be safeguarded by an application by analogy of Article 351 TFEU, in the same manner as pre-accession agreements. The analysis will include but extend beyond Regulation No. 1219/2012, which attempts to provide a sound legal regime of a transitory period only.

Design in Context: Existing International Agreements and New Cooperation

AbstractThis research note highlights an important element missing from rational design theories of international agreements: “institutional context”—the presence or absence of existing and prior agreements between prospective partners in “new” cooperation. If, as rational design theorists argue, agreement design is deliberate, strategic, and directed toward enhancing contracting parties' ability to credibly commit to future cooperation, then prior design “successes” should influence the terms of additional cooperation. We test for this omitted variable problem in three agreement design outcomes:ex antelimitations on agreement duration, exit clauses, and dispute-settlement provisions. Through an augmentation and reanalysis of data from a key study in the rational design literature—Barbara Koremenos's “Contracting Around International Uncertainty”—we show institutional context is positively correlated with inclusion ofex antetime limitations in negotiated agreements and negatively correlated with the inclusion of exit clauses and third-party dispute-settlement provisions. Institutional context also mediates and conditions the effects of the explanatory variable at the heart of existing rational design theories—uncertainty about the future distribution of gains from cooperation. Our findings show that the collective appeal of particular design features varies not only with the nature of underlying strategic problems, but also with degrees of shared institutional context.

Choice of foreign licensees: information and communication technology firms

Purpose – This paper aims to study the validity of potential factors that might affect US information and communication technology (ICT) holders' choice of foreign licensing partners. Design/methodology/approach – This study focuses on ICT industry. The sample firms for this study are drawn from the SDC by Thomson Financial and this sample was used to construct a data in which a unit of observation is the unique US licensor – foreign licensee pair, or a dyad. The hypotheses are tested using the random-effects logit model. Findings – The important explanatory factors relate to the knowledge appropriability and the level of economics freedom of a licensee's country, and familiarity between partners through prior licensing agreements. Market similarity between partners, however, appears to be an insignificant factor. Practical implications – The findings suggest that transaction cost, competition, and national absorb capacity considerations weigh in heavily in explaining firms' choice of foreign licensing partners. Originality/value – The paper makes an important contribution to licensing literature as the understanding of what drives partner choice is still sparse. Especially, the paper makes a uniqueness of dealing with international technology licensing.

Good Agreements Make Good Friends

When starting a new collaborative endeavor, it pays to establish upfront how strongly your partner commits to the common goal and what compensation can be expected in case the collaboration is violated. Diverse examples in biological and social contexts have demonstrated the pervasiveness of making prior agreements on posterior compensations, suggesting that this behavior could have been shaped by natural selection. Here, we analyze the evolutionary relevance of such a commitment strategy and relate it to the costly punishment strategy, where no prior agreements are made. We show that when the cost of arranging a commitment deal lies within certain limits, substantial levels of cooperation can be achieved. Moreover, these levels are higher than that achieved by simple costly punishment, especially when one insists on sharing the arrangement cost. Not only do we show that good agreements make good friends, agreements based on shared costs result in even better outcomes.

Beyond ResQNet: Clarifying the Standard for the Use of Patent Settlements

In 2010, the Federal Circuit issued ResQNet.com, Inc. v. Lansa, Inc., a landmark decision holding that settlement-related evidence can be compelling proof of damages in subsequent litigation. The effects of ResQNet were immediately evident. Some practitioners argued that ResQNet granted unlimited permission to use prior patent settlement agreements and related negotiations as evidence of damages for patent infringement. Some courts agreed, while others decided that the Federal Circuit’s ruling had no effect on Federal Rule of Evidence 408’s prohibition on the use at trial of settlement-related evidence to prove damages. Simply put, ResQNet wrought havoc on the standards for the use of patent settlements and settlement negotiations, resulting in a range of divergent rulings nationwide. Faced with an increasingly fractured landscape, the Federal Circuit has taken steps to calm the confusion caused by ResQNet. In two recent decisions, the Federal Circuit attempted to clarify the standards for using patent settlement agreements and negotiations. But several questions remain unanswered. In particular, one of these decisions exacerbated a circuit split over “settlement privilege,” and the other left questions regarding the propriety of certain expert testimony unaddressed. Despite the Federal Circuit’s recent efforts to clarify the meaning and scope of ResQNet, practitioners and courts will continue to wrangle with difficult questions regarding the discovery and admissibility of settlement-related evidence. These lingering issues will require further Federal Circuit attention—or even Supreme Court intervention—before the questions raised by ResQNet can finally be settled.

Underinvestment and Expropriation

This paper argues that there are several factors that investors must take into account when choosing to invest or not. One of the most important factors, which goes largely undiscussed in existing literature, is the behavior of governments undergoing political reform. Specifically, the temptation to renege on prior agreements becomes stronger over time. This causes investors to make fewer investments, thus giving markets an appearance of underinvestment. The degree of underinvestment, however, can be used as an indicator for how likely investors believe government expropriation is in particular industries.

A new generation of trade policy: potential risks to diet-related health from the trans pacific partnership agreement

Trade poses risks and opportunities to public health nutrition. This paper discusses the potential food-related public health risks of a radical new kind of trade agreement: the Trans Pacific Partnership agreement (TPP). Under negotiation since 2010, the TPP involves Australia, Brunei, Canada, Chile, Japan, Malaysia, Mexico, New Zealand, Peru, Singapore, the USA, and Vietnam. Here, we review the international evidence on the relationships between trade agreements and diet-related health and, where available, documents and leaked text from the TPP negotiations. Similar to other recent bilateral or regional trade agreements, we find that the TPP would propose tariffs reductions, foreign investment liberalisation and intellectual property protection that extend beyond provisions in the multilateral World Trade Organization agreements. The TPP is also likely to include strong investor protections, introducing major changes to domestic regulatory regimes to enable greater industry involvement in policy making and new avenues for appeal. Transnational food corporations would be able to sue governments if they try to introduce health policies that food companies claim violate their privileges in the TPP; even the potential threat of litigation could greatly curb governments’ ability to protect public health. Hence, we find that the TPP, emblematic of a new generation of 21st century trade policy, could potentially yield greater risks to health than prior trade agreements. Because the text of the TPP is secret until the countries involved commit to the agreement, it is essential for public health concerns to be articulated during the negotiation process. Unless the potential health consequences of each part of the text are fully examined and taken into account, and binding language is incorporated in the TPP to safeguard regulatory policy space for health, the TPP could be detrimental to public health nutrition. Health advocates and health-related policymakers must be proactive in their engagement with the trade negotiations.

Public attitudes to the use in research of personal health information from general practitioners' records: a survey of the Irish general public

IntroductionUnderstanding the views of the public is essential if generally acceptable policies are to be devised that balance research access to general practice patient records with protection of patients' privacy....