This article introduces a novel database on investment treaties: called the Electronic Database of Investment Treaties (EDIT). We describe the genesis of the database and what makes EDIT the most comprehensive and systematic database to date. What stands out besides the coverage is that treaties...

Scholars and negotiators often assert that model treaty texts published by international organizations (IO) shape investment treaty design. This paper empirically investigates this role of IOs as shadow drafters. It tracks the imprint of six IO templates on the text of negotiated international...

Preferential trade agreements (PTAs) have been proliferating for the last twenty years. A large literature has studied various aspects of this phenomenon. Until very recently, this literature has treated all PTAs as equal. However, PTAs differ significantly in terms of design. In this paper, we...

Since 1990 the number of preferential trade agreements (PTAs) has increased very rapidly. This paper aims to contribute to this literature by presenting a new database on PTAs called Design of Trade Agreements (DESTA). We identified a total of 690 negotiated trade agreements between 1945 and...