Economic theory has made considerable progress in explaining why sovereign countries cooperate in trade. Central to most theories of trade cooperation are issues of self-enforcement: The threat of reprisal by an aggrieved party maintains the initial balance of concessions and prevents...

The previous literature provides a highly ambiguous picture on the impact of trade and investment agreements on FDI. Most empirical studies ignore the actual content of BITs and RTAs, treating them as "black boxes", despite the diversity of investment provisions constituting the essence of these...

This paper is a contribution to the literature on rational design of trade agreements. The World Trade Organization (WTO) is an incomplete contract among sovereign states. Incomplete contracts contain gaps. Ex post, contractual gaps may leave gains from trade unrealized; they may create...

This paper constitutes an attempt to reframe and eventually deflate the ongoing “compliance-vs.-rebalancing” debate which has permeated WTO scholarship for the last 10 years. Our main criticism concerns the substance of the entire debate. We find that scholars on both sides of the...

What kind of technical assistance and capacity building benefits do developing countries enjoy if they sign a free trade agreement (FTA) with developed countries? This is a frequently asked question among developing country officials involved in FTA policymaking. While we tend to normatively...

Regional trade agreements (RTAs) have become an indelible feature of the international trading landscape. Most, if not all, RTAs contain provisions that establish procedures for resolving disputes among their signatory members. Yet, the design and functioning of these dispute settlement...

International investment agreements (IIAs) almost universally define their temporal validity and thus set conditions for States’ exit from these treaties. This study presents the results of the survey of language that determines the temporal validity of 2,061 bilateral investment agreements...

Die Diskussion über die Transatlantische Handels- und Investitionspartnerschaft (TTIP) ist kontrovers. Durch die neuerdings bekannt gewordenen Veröffentlichungen zum Verhandlungsstand des TTIP-Abkommens (TTIP Leaks) ist aber eine bessere Beurteilung der Einzelfragen möglich. Der Autor...

Regional Trade Agreements (RTAs) are growing more and more important in the global trade in goods and services. Between 1958 and 2005, 141 RTAs concerning the trade in goods were indicated to the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) Secretariat (since 1995 the World Trade Organization...

Investor-State dispute settlement mechanisms (ISDS) are an important component of most International Investment Agreements (IIAs) and have significant influence on how disputes between States and investors are resolved. This statistical survey of a large sample of 1,660 bilateral investment...