Britain has voted to leave the European Union. In a referendum held on Thursday (June 23), close to 52 per cent of Britons favored leaving the EU. The referendum results reveal that the arguments put forward by Brexiters found greater resonance with the sentiments of ordinary people than the ones put forward by pro-European camps, the establishment and world leaders.
Before the polls closed, the UK’s political establishment was expecting that overwhelming voters would vote to stay in the EU….
The contemporary model of international investment agreements (IIAs), enforced through investor-state arbitration, is in turmoil, if not in crisis. An UNCTAD International Investment Arbitration Issues Note published in mid-2014 identified four pathways that had emerged: maintaining the status quo; disengaging from the regime; introducing selective adjustments; and engaging in systematic reform. In recent years Brazil, South Africa and India, three of the large and ascending powers from the global South known colloquially (alongside with Russia and China) as the…
On April 29, 2016, India’s income tax department released tax statistics after a gap of almost 16 years. Till 2000, the tax department used to publish All India Income Tax Statistics but the publication was discontinued for some unknown reasons. No explanations were given by the authorities for the discontinuation of this publication despite numerous demands made for its release by Indian economists and researchers.
According to media reports, the government released this data after French economist Thomas Piketty, author of…
Numerous bilateral and multilateral trade and investment agreements have been and are being negotiated without proper consultation of stakeholders, mostly in secrecy and without public participation. The Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) and the Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement (CETA) between the European Union and Canada concern not only the United States but also the 28 States of the European Union. As model for these new mega-treaties stands the Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP), which was signed by twelve…
As opposition to the Trans Pacific Partnership Agreement intensifies in the United States and Japan, Australia is presently hosting negotiations for another regional trade agreement which is raising serious concerns for worldwide access to medicines. Negotiators for the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership agreement (RCEP) are currently in Perth this week for their twelfth round of negotiations. RCEP is under negotiation between the ten ASEAN member states and the six countries that have existing trade agreements with ASEAN;…
