Given the prominence of international trade in the globalized economy, large undesirable costs arise due to uncertainties in international transactions. The United Nations Convention on Contracts for the International Sales of Goods, Vienna, 1980 identifies some of these costs to be a product of separate legal rules on international trade, and recognizes the solution to lie in a unified statement of norms. Judicial experience with the Convention, however, has demonstrated that the existence of a unified statement of norms does not ensure uniform results. While the majority of the literature on the Convention takes a black letter law approach without examining the impact of varying interpretations on the end users of the Convention, this thesis argues that the provisions of the Convention, from the perspective of the parties, must operate to achieve the ends of efficiency. Absent the same, parties drafting a contract would opt out of the application of the default rules by including a provision in the contract governing the contingency. Such an outcome would in turn significantly increase transaction costs associated with contractual negotiating and drafting. This thesis concerns itself with six areas that have raised a great deal of disagreement amongst the scholarly and judicial community namely: The scope and role of the principle of good faith; the issues surrounding the inclusion of standard terms into the contracts of sale; the extent to which the Convention allows for the use of openprice terms; the question of the period within which notice of non-conformity must be provided; the rate at which interest has to be paid on sums in arrears and; the guiding principles for the interpretation of the term 'foreseeability' as contained in article 74. Each chapter of this thesis therefore deals with one of these issues and attempts to resolve it in line with the international character of the Convention - and one that promotes the efficiency of the agreement. For the purposes of this thesis, an efficient rule is defined as one that operates to minimize transaction costs, does not allow or de-incentivizes the potential of parties to act in an opportunistic manner and places liability on the best risk avoider. In reaching such an interpretation of the articles under examination, the thesis gives due regard to the travaux preparatoires, scholarly opinion and judicial pronunciations on the matter.