In the past, an Irish barrister and arbitrator James Bridgeman remarked that the arbitration of competition law is a meeting of two black arts. This perception has not changed since and yet, the adjudication of anti-competitive agreements in arbitration is an everyday event of real life. This thesis, after a brief summary of history of arbitrability of competition law, picks specific issues closely tied to current practical problems that arbitrators must face. First, whether arbitrators should consider themselves as being under obligation to raise competition issues of their own motion (ex officio) during arbitration proceedings, secondly, whether national courts of the EU Member States must automatically set arbitral awards in breach of competition rules aside and thirdly, whether arbitrators are in a good position to address complex antitrust questions properly and whether they can receive some help from the official competition authorities entrusted with primary enforcement of antitrust law. Mainly EU law will be covered here albeit with few brief excursions into particular problems of national law of the Czech Republic, to which this thesis endorses relevant solutions.

The aim of this thesis is to analyze international environmental agreements. It characterises the process of the making of international environmental agreements, the background in which they are made, the subjects, who take part in the process and generally define the position they have in international law. The focus is to point out their differences from the other international agreements. The second part concentrates on the analyses of the individual agreements, at first the general historical development and then follow the specific groups of agreements, divided by topics with the emphasis on the most important ones.

Agricultural support levels are at a crossroad with reduced distortions in OECD countries and increasing support for agricultural producers in emerging economies over the last decades. This paper studies the determinants of distortions in the agricultural markets by putting a specific focus on the role of trade policy. Applying various different dynamic panel data estimators and explicitly accounting for potential endogeneity of trade policy agreements, we find that an increase in the number of bilateral free trade agreements exhibits significant short- and long-run distortion reducing effects. By contrast, WTO's Uruguay Agreement on Agriculture has not been able to systematically contribute to a reduction in agriculture trade distortions. From a policy point of view our findings thus point to a lack of effectiveness of multilateral trade negotiations. / Series: Department of Economics Working Paper Series

This diploma thesis operates with advance pricing agreements. In the Czech Republic, advance pricing agreements were implemented in the form of binding rulings in the year 2006. The goal of the thesis was to analyze and compare binding rulings in the Czech Republic and advance pricing agreements implemented in the countries chosen, which were Germany, Slovakia and Poland, with the theoretical concept of advance pricing agreements as stated in OECD Transfer Pricing Guidelines for Multinational Enterprises and Tax Administrations.

The number of investor-state arbitration disputes has been on the rise since the mid 1990s. Their determinants are still not fully understood. This study empirically examines the effects of economic crises on investor-state arbitration claims, based on international investment agreements (IIAs). We use a unique dataset containing 961 investor-state arbitration claims covering 132 host (defendant) and 75 home (claimant) countries over the 1986-2017 period. We find that episodes of economic crises are positively and significantly associated with the number of investor-state arbitration cases and we uncover evidence that the type of economic crisis matters. In addition, the positive impact of economic crises on arbitration cases is inversely related to the rule of law in a host country. These results are consistent with the view that governments are prioritizing policy actions aiming at mitigating the negative impact of economic crises over compliance with their obligations in IIAs. From a policy perspective, our results suggest that besides strengthening the rule of law domestically, the IIA system should be reformed with a focus on avoiding a vicious circle, thus shortening the recovery period after economic crises. / Series: Department of Economics Working Paper Series

The diploma thesis is focused on the voluntary tools of environmental protection, those representing a remarkably wide and variable group of tools. The aim of this thesis is to create an integrated and compendious overview of the previously mentioned tools applied not only in the Czech Republic, to outline its basic characteristics, ways of its usage, and its mutual combinations, including the analysis of the legal regulation of the voluntary tools. After the two introductory chapters dedicated to the environmental policy and the system of all tools of environmental protection the following chapter deals with the voluntary tools only, dividing them for the purposes of this diploma thesis into categories of regulatory, informative, and educational tools. Considering the extent of the topic, the author decided on a detailed analysis elaboration of the three chosen tools in the following part of the thesis. In the fourth chapter the diploma theses concentrates on the EMAS according to the Regulation (EC) No 1221/2009 of the European Parliament and of the Council on the voluntary participation by organisations in a Community Eco-Management and Audit Scheme (EMAS), which is being compared to the second implementation option of Environmental Management System, that is represented by the internationally...

Demand for organic food products has grown at rates as high as 20% since the 1990s. Organic grains compose 11% of total organic food demand, and are used in livestock production which represents 43% of organic food demand. Though the demand for organic grains is arguably increasing, domestic production of organic grains is lagging. Producers in the U.S. are hesitant to transition to certified organic grain production for a number of reasons. However, a lack of information pertaining to the organic grains market is one of the most prominent barriers to entry. One method that may provide insight into marketing opportunities available to organic grain producers is to create classifications of organic grain buyers. These classifications may allow for the comparison of business demographics, perceptions of the organic grain market, relationship formation and maintenance factors, and characteristics of purchasing agreements across buyer classifications. These comparisons would allow producers to identify potential marketing opportunities by providing insight regarding types of assistance offered by buyers, how to form a relationship with buyers, types of purchasing agreements used, and purchasing agreement characteristics and requirements. Producers would then be able to identify appropriate buyers for their respective situations based on times contracts are signed, payment timing, storage and transportation requirements, and the amount of organic practice documentation buyers require. Similar classifications have been proposed for organic producers, but, to date, no such classification exists for organic buyers. This work proposes two classifications of organic buyers. First, a classification of committed organic buyers versus pragmatic organic/pragmatic conventional buyers is motivated by similar classifications of organic producers found in previous works. Secondly, this work also introduces a classification of buyers that are sellers versus end-users of organic grains. Literature has suggested that the type of organic grain buyer (seller or end-user) gives rise to differences in functionality regarding interacting with producers and purchasing agreement characteristics. A sample of 45 organic grain buyers in the Midwest was utilized to characterize business demographics, perceptions of the organic grain market, relationship factors, and purchasing agreement characteristics on the two aforementioned categorization of organic grain buyers. A mixed methodology approach was utilized involving data collection via phone interviews and an online questionnaire. Initial data analysis suggests that data from the two data collection methods statistically differed in some measures of business demographics, perceptions of the organic grains market, and types of assistance offered to producers. This suggests that buyers responding to a phone interview may be more willing to assist producers and have more positive perceptions of the organic market. Thus, each analysis separates phone interview and online questionnaire responses. Due to a small sample size, means comparisons were utilized for the proposed categorizations of buyers. Data were found to not adhere to the normality assumption, requiring the use of nonparametric methods. A Chi-square test was conducted for binary variables, while a Wilcoxon-Mann-Whitney test was utilized for continuous and categorical variables. Results suggest that committed organic grain buyers are smaller in terms of gross sales than pragmatic organic/conventional buyers. Fewer committed organic grain buyers require the grain supplier to pay for grain delivery when compared to pragmatic buyers. Both the comparison of committed organic versus pragmatic buyers and the comparison of sellers versus end-users suggest that there is a bifurcation in organic grain buyers, indicating potential conventionalization within the organic grain industry. Additionally, both categorizations also indicate the buyers anticipate future supply and demand to both increase, but do not expect future price to increase. Thus, it can be concluded that buyers believe future supply will increase at a greater rate than demand, decreasing price. Alternatively, buyers may expect future supply and demand to grow proportionally, keeping price constant. Though the sample is representative of the population of buyers present, the small sample size suggests results of this work should be interpreted with caution.

A research report submitted to the Faculty of Commerce, Law and Management, University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Commerce (Taxation). Johannesburg, 2015 / Tax treaties have a developed language of their own within the field of international law. They may include terms that are unknown in particular jurisdictions of domestic law or therein defined differently. Because the language of tax treaties and domestic law differ from each other, the definitions of certain terms and income type under a tax treaty and under different states’ domestic law are not necessary identical. Despite these differences, tax treaty definitions must be used for tax treaty classification purposes, and domestic law definitions must be used for domestic law classification purposes. The tax definition determines the type of the income for tax treaty purposes even though the income would qualify under another income category under the treaty states’ domestic law. Similarly, the domestic tax law definition determines the type of income for domestic law purposes (Helminen 2010). In most instances the treaty definitions of the various types of income refer back to domestic tax law, and where the domestic tax law definition deviates between the two treaty countries, this may lead to the application by these countries of different articles of the treaty. If this is caused by the application of the domestic law, this is referred to as a conflict of qualification in the Commentaries to the OECD Model Tax Convention. In general a conflict of qualification refers to a situation where identical facts are treated differently for tax purposes in different countries. Such a conflict may either concern the subject or the object of taxation. Key words: Tax treaties, OECD MTC, Double Tax Agreements, double taxation, conflicts of qualification, hybrid entities, partnerships, fiscally transparent, domestic law, Mutual Agreement Procedures, permanent establishment.

Thesis advisor: David Deese / The proliferation of regional trade agreements is a well-documented phenomena. This thesis focuses on the relatively unexplored area of non-economic motivations states may have for joining regional trade agreements. It uses the formation of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) and the negotiation of the European Community's Single European Act as case studies. / Thesis (BA) — Boston College, 2004. / Submitted to: Boston College. College of Arts and Sciences. / Discipline: Political Science. / Discipline: College Honors Program.

Do ceasefires during peace negotiations facilitate reaching a peace agreement in internal armed conflicts? Existing case studies offer diverging arguments and mixed empirical evidence for whether ceasefires should precede or come after the more political settlements. In this regard, I argue that ceasefires facilitate that the combatant parties will reach a political deal by increasing mutual trust, alleviating the impact of two critical uncertainties in the negotiation stage: the uncertainty on whether the other party is willing to reach a negotiated settlement, and the uncertainty on whether the other party has the capacity to control their respective armed forces. Using new data on negotiation processes in internal armed conflicts in Africa, between 1989 and 2013, I examine the effect of having a ceasefire during negotiations on the probability of reaching a negotiated accord, while controlling for the levels of violence during the talks as a crucial conditioning factor, as well as for the presence of peacekeepers, and the intervention of a mediator. The results show that early ceasefires have a significant effect on the conclusion of political agreements at the talks, and that this effect is stronger when the talks are surrounded by decreased or null levels of violence.