Trade agreements and international cooperation on public procurement regulation

Abstract

The liberalisation of access to government procurement markets is an important element of recent vintage preferential trade initiatives, including the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP), and has been a longstanding focus of the European Union (EU) and the United States of America (USA) in the context of the World Trade Organization (WTO). The stylised fact is that for the most part government entities continue to "buy local", suggesting that efforts to negotiate market opening have not been very effective. This paper argues for a reconsideration of the design of international cooperation on procurement regulation to focus more on improving the efficacy and efficiency of procurement procedures more generally.