Why and how the APEC process is working

Although there has been no grand design, the process of Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) has made steady progress, much more than the ministers present at its creation in 1989 could possibly have envisaged. It has made progress by proceeding pragmatically. the impetus came from the economies of the Western Pacific that are dependent on trade, and on the maintenance of an open trading system, and accordingly got fed up to the gills with being discriminated against in the markets of the major trading powers. APEC might thus be seen as an exercise in “collective action” to influence more powerful countries and strengthen the multilateral trading system.     

Reviews and Commentary

Managing the secret war in Laos

Timothy N. Castle: At War in the Shadow of Vietnam, U.S. Military Aid to the Royal Lao Government, 1955–1975. Columbia University Press, New York, 1993,257 p., $15.00 p.b.

The angry intriguer with a marble pulse

Albert Glotzer

Lars T. Lih, Oleg V. Naumov, and Oleg V. Khlevniuk, eds.: Stalin's Letters to Molotov, 1925–1936

Yale University Press, New Haven, 1995, 276 p., $25.00.

The NKVD in Spain

Herbert Romerstein: Heroic Victims: Stalin's Foreign Legion in the Spanish Civil War The Council for the Defense of Freedom, Washington, DC, 1994, 127 p., $7.95 (paper).     

科斯定理在侵权法制定中的应用

科斯定理认为 ,交易成本的高低对权利规则的制定起着决定性作用。如果交易成本较低 ,权利的原始配置就不会影响太大 ,因为当事人会自行重置 ;但在交易成本较高的情况下 ,一般会保持权利的原始配置状态。科斯定理不仅是经济学原理 ,在侵权法领域也大有作为。