Efficiency, Equity, Legitimacy: The Multilateral Trading System at the Millennium

This conference volume honors the late Raymond Vernon, a prolific analyst of international trade and investment over five decades. Taken together, the 16 essays and commentaries by economists and lawyers from both sides of the Atlantic offer a rich fare on the role of international trade in enhancing economic prosperity (and occasionally causing serious disturbance). The pieces also touch on the WTO's current state, its political legitimacy, and the best ways to respond to the legitimate criticisms of the organization without undermining liberal trade or its significant contribution to economic prosperity over the past half-century. But foreign investment, a topic to which Vernon made major contributions, is relatively neglected here.