Pierre Sauvé

Pierre Sauvé is a Senior Research Fellow and lecturer at the University of Bern’s World Trade Institute. He previously served as a Senior Trade Specialist in the Geneva office of the World Bank’s Global Trade team, where he led the Bank’s work on trade governance with key stakeholder organizations in Geneva and engaged in trade-related country operations on a global scale. Previously, he served as Director of Studies and Director of External Programs and Academic Partnerships at the University of Bern’s World Trade Institute (WTI), in Switzerland. He has held Visiting Professor appointments at the College of Europe in Bruges, Belgium, the University of Barcelona (IELPO), the Institut d’Etudes Politiques (Sciences-Po) in Paris, France, and the London School of Economics and Political Science. He served as a senior economist in the OECD Trade Directorate from 1993-2002, a period during which he also served as a Fellow and adjunct lecturer at the Harvard Kennedy School’s Center for Business and Government and was appointed Non-Resident Senior Fellow at the Brookings Institution in Washington, D.C. (1998-2000). Prior to joining the OECD, he served as a services negotiator within the Canadian Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade’s Office of North American Free Trade Negotiations (1991-93).

He was previously a staff member of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade in Geneva, Switzerland (1988-91) as well as the Bank for International Settlements, in Basel, Switzerland (1987-88). Mr. Sauvé was educated in economics and international relations at the Université du Québec à Montreal and Carleton University in Canada and at Cambridge and Oxford universities in the United Kingdom. He has advised the governments of OECD and developing countries and served as a consultant to leading regional and multilateral agencies involved in trade and development. He serves on the Editorial Board of the Journal of World Trade and the Latin American Journal of International Trade Law, is a Member of the Review Committee of UNCTAD’s Series on International Investment and Development and serves on the Advisory Board of the World Trade Organization’s Academic Chairs Program and UNESCAP’s Asian Research Network on Trade (ArtNet). His principal research interests lie in the areas of trade in services, the regulation of foreign direct investment, comparative regional integration, and the political economy of the multilateral trading system, issues on which he has published extensively in leading academic outlets. His latest book, co-edited with Krista Nadavukaren Schefer and Rodrigo Polanco and entitled International Economic Law as Symphony: Thomas Cottier and the Harmonies of Trade, was published by Hart Publishers in June 2025.