Project description
Fostering a greater understanding of the controversial aspects of modern trade agreements
Modern trade agreements no longer emphasise basic trade liberalisation but instead revolve around non-tariff issues to achieve broader economic integration, as seen in the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership as well as the Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement (CETA). The EU-funded DIA project aims to enhance our understanding of such deep integration agreements and their controversial aspects. Specifically, the project will examine provisions regarding investor protection, regulatory cooperation such as CETA’s Regulatory Cooperation Forum and intellectual property rights protection with an emphasis on the agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights.
Objective
This project aims to improve our understanding of deep integration agreements, which have generated an extraordinary amount of controversy in recent years. Unlike ordinary trade agreements, deep integration agreements do not just focus on reducing tariff barriers but seek to achieve much broader economic integration. Prominent examples include the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) negotiated between the EU and the US and the Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement (CETA) negotiated between the EU and Canada.
I proceed in three complementary parts, focusing on the most controversial deep integration issues. In a first part, I consider provisions regarding investor protection including the Investor-State Dispute Settlement System. My ambition is to provide a comprehensive theoretical treatment of international investment agreements, which sheds light on their fundamental purpose and assesses their real-world design. In a second part, I turn to efforts towards regulatory cooperation such as CETA’s Regulatory Cooperation Forum. Here, my goal is again to provide a broad theoretical analysis, which identifies the scope for regulatory cooperation and makes suggestions for their real-world design. In a third part, I study intellectual property rights protection, specifically the agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS). In particular, I propose to take a canonical model of intellectual property rights agreements to the data and quantitatively assess the efficiency and equity implications of TRIPS.
Fields of science
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Programme(s)
Funding Scheme
ERC-COG - Consolidator GrantHost institution
8006 Zurich
Switzerland