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This paper aims to reflect on the outcomes of the Nairobi Ministerial Conference of 2015, which, for all intents and purposes, put the Doha Round to rest and analyses the policy implications and lessons for policymaking at the World Trade Organization (WTO), most importantly the abandonment of the “single undertaking” and return to plurilateral agreements.

The paper approaches the issue of WTO policymaking by analysing the various outputs produced both before and because of the Ministerial Conference.

The paper suggests that the Nairobi Ministerial has finally put an end to the Doha Round and comes to the conclusion that policymaking at the multilateral level (i.e. through the single undertaking) will change significantly in the future because the WTO Members are incapable of reaching a comprehensive agreement at this time. Instead, the current trend towards trade policymaking via FTA is likely to continue while the WTO focuses on plurilateral negotiations on narrow and discreet issues.

The paper contributes to the literature on the analysis of global regulatory fragmentation and on trade policymaking. It draws attention, in particular, to the consequences of the last Ministerial Conference and highlights prospects for the future of global trade regulation.

The appropriateness of retaliatory trade measures in the World Trade Organization dispute settlement process have increasingly come under scrutiny in recent years. Several Members and commentators alike have recommended large-scale amendments to the Dispute Settlement Understanding (DSU) to provide alternatives to retaliatory measures, with the most notable including compensation, collective retaliation, and increased special and differential treatment for developing countries and/or widespread loss of privileges for non-conforming respondents.

Unfortunately, many of the proposals failed to first identify the aims and objectives of the retaliatory phase, or even of dispute settlement more generally. This chapter takes a more holistic approach in its analysis of whether any of the current proposals will improve (or harm) the system. In doing so, this chapter will first assess the effectiveness and appropriateness of retaliatory trade measures by evaluating the goals and objectives in which it is designed to achieve. It will then evaluate some of the more prominent proposals for amending the DSU under the same framework. Taking such an approach will allow for a more comprehensive review and will reveal not only the problems with retaliatory trade measures, but also its positive aspects, and not only the positive aspects of the suggested alternatives but also where they may be detrimental to the system.

A principle reason for the inability of the General Agreements on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) to serve as the vehicle for international trade liberalization was that it was the protocol for the establishment of the International Trade Organization. It was never intended to become a functioning institution. As such, it did not have a well-designed system for the settlement of trade disputes. At least partially because the GATT was not intended to function as an institution, an arguably excessive reliance on consensus emerged as the vehicle for the resolution of trade disputes. A consensus to accept the recommendations of a dispute panel became the standard for resolution under the GATT. Because the defendant could always object to implementation of the panel's recommendation, thus denying consensus, successful resolution of disputes were relatively infrequent. In the 47 years, during which the GATT was the principle international trade forum, 101 panel reports were adopted. Given that it is possible to file disputes on the basis of nullification and impairment of expected benefits, which is a considerably weaker standard than the allegation of a legal breach, it is apparent that the ineffectiveness of the dispute resolution mechanism was a deterrent to the filing of complaints. As the GATT increased in membership and pressures to address increasingly complex trade issues (intellectual property rights and agricultural subsidies, for example) emerged, it became apparent that the GATT could be undermined by an inability to resolve disputes.

The purpose of this study is to contribute towards the debate about global access to COVID-19 vaccines, therapeutics and diagnostics.

The global scramble for COVID-19 vaccine and other related pharmaceutical products have once again exposed the limitations of the Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS). High-income countries are claiming a lion’s share of the first available batches of the COVID-19 vaccine in total disregard of the consequences such approach would have on the low-income countries that lack both the manufacturing wherewithal and the financial resources to purchase the vaccine and other products needed to combat the pandemic. This paper reviews the existing TRIPS Flexibilities and analyses their limitations with respect to equitable access of pharmaceutical products in times of health emergencies. This paper then considers the unique challenges that have been brought to the fore by the COVID-19 pandemic. Finally, this paper analytically explores some options that have been proposed so far that the World Trade Organization (WTO) or governments can take in the immediate to near term to facilitate equitable access to COVID-19 pharmaceutical products and technologies. This research is non-empirical, desk-based research. It is, therefore, based on the literature review of existing body of work that is relevant to the topic under discussion. Mindful of the epistemological challenges that are always associated with desk-based research, part of the methodology of this work is to seek support from related empirical studies based on different philosophical underpinnings but that confirm the working hypothesis of this research.

This paper finds that there is still a need for a comprehensive reform of TRIPS Agreement to streamline the voluntary licencing system which is an important tool for low-income countries’ access to affordable pharmaceuticals. However, for purposes of dealing with COVID-19, WTO members should consider establishing pooled Licencing Facilities and procurement strategies via already existing political, economic or regional trade groupings.

This research is original. All sources have been acknowledged. This research synthesises different research papers and applies different viewpoints to the debate on the impact of the TRIPS Agreement on equitable access to COVID-19 vaccines, therapeutics and diagnostics.

All too often tragedy and disaster strike the world around us, and when they do, people often are left speechless and powerless. In schools, there is no subject as uniquely situated to helping children develop an understanding of social events as the social studies; as history is filled with instances of loss, tragedy, and death (i.e. war, conflict, natural disasters, etc.). During these difficult times, teachers often encounter important questions from inquisitive children on these challenging topics. This manuscript discusses how an elementary social studies teacher leveraged the assets of children’s literature to assist her students in learning to grapple with the death of their beloved classroom pet. Parents and educators are provided literary resources and strategies to assist students in grappling with the concepts of loss or death.

Over the past 15 years or so, a very large proportion of the forensic economics literature has been devoted to research concerning better ways of estimating damages in cases involving personal injury and wrongful death (PI/WD). This is probably not surprising since the largest fraction of consulting income for forensic economists (at least those in the National Association of Forensic Economics, NAFE) comes from such cases.

This article explains the causal mechanism supporting sustainable longevity by analysing the last three generations of one of the oldest family firms in Latin America.

An explanatory single-case qualitative research based on critical realism explores why and how this family firm has been able to maintain its multigenerational longevity.

Los Lingues's evolutionary strategy, driven by transgenerational entrepreneurship under effectuation, has supported this family firm's sustainable longevity. Its effectual logic emerged mainly from the richness of the firm's historical resources embedded in its identity, knowledge and social capital and priority to preserve socioemotional wealth.

This study integrates socioemotional wealth and effectuation theory to explain a family firm's ability to survive through generations and sustain longevity. The study demonstrates the relevance of effectual logic in the entrepreneurial dynamics of a multigenerational family firm. Effectual logic drives the firm evolution and adaptation for sustainable longevity.

Ship route prediction (SRP) is a quite complicated task, which enables the determination of the next position of a ship after a given period of time, given its current position. This paper aims to describe a study, which compares five families of multiclass classification algorithms to perform SRP.

Tested algorithm families include: Naive Bayes (NB), nearest neighbors, decision trees, linear algorithms and extension from binary. A common structure for all the algorithm families was implemented and adapted to the specific case, according to the test to be done. The tests were done on one month of real data extracted from automatic identification system messages, collected around the island of Malta.

Experiments show that K-nearest neighbors and decision trees algorithms outperform all the other algorithms. Experiments also demonstrate that linear algorithms and NB have a very poor performance.

This study is limited to the area surrounding Malta. Thus, findings cannot be generalized to every context. However, the methodology presented is general and can help other researchers in this area to choose appropriate methods for their problems.

The results of this study can be exploited by applications for maritime surveillance to build decision support systems to monitor and predict ship routes in a given area. For example, to protect the marine environment, the use of SRP techniques could be used to protect areas at risk such as marine protected areas, from illegal fishing.

The paper proposes a solid methodology to perform tests on SRP, based on a series of important machine learning algorithms for the prediction.