International trade, investment, and the sustainable development goals : World Trade Forum

"International trade and foreign investment are important pathways to realise the ambitious set of Sustainable Development Goals finalised as part of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. To evaluate the promises and limits of these vectors, we invited leading scholars from political science, law and economics to Florence to participate in the World Trade Forum in September 2018. The focus of our attention is the manner in which the SDGs have found their way into international trade and investment agreements, together with the problem of interactions and trade-offs across Goals. We hope this volume will offer a valuable guide for scholars and policy makers in identifying and evaluating the complex challenges related to sustainable development. We benefited greatly from the exchange among the participants and wish to thank all of them for their contributions, which resulted in this volume. This volume would not have been possible without the support of the Robert Schuman Centre for Advanced Studies at the European University Institute (EUI) and the World Trade Institute (WTI) at the University of Bern, and of Manfred Elsig and Bernard Hoekman in particular. We wish to thank the EUI for financial support and hosting the World Trade Forum conference that provided the basis for this book. We are also grateful for the financial support of the Bertelsmann Stiftung, the CEPR Trade Policy Research Network, the WTI, and the European Horizon 2020 Research and Innovation Program under Grant Agreement No 770680 (RESPECT). Damian Raess acknowledges the support of the Swiss National Science Foundation under Grant Agreement No PP00P1 163745). We further wish to thank Maria Fanou of the EUI for her excellent editorial support, as well as Marianne Nield and Finola O'Sullivan from Cambridge University Press for their guidance throughout the entire process and continued support for the World Trade Forum."