Ongoing research projects

In Search of a Geneva Consensus: The Trade-Development Nexus in the GATT/WTO and UNCTAD

This research project aims to systematically examine how economic policy doctrines have shaped the trade and development agendas of two key Geneva-based international organisations: the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) and its successor, the World Trade Organization (WTO), as well as the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD). The project introduces the first longitudinal study to track the evolution of the trade-development nexus within these organisations, pinpointing critical junctures where prevailing norms have shifted. The initial work package is conceptual, refining a theoretical framework to explain the evolution of trade doctrines associated with development in intergovernmental economic organisations. The second work package intends to develop two comprehensive corpora of documents examining the evolution of trade and development doctrines within both institutions, including ministerial speeches, policy recommendations, flagship publications, and policy briefs from these IOs. The methods employed range from topic modelling and sentiment analysis to various natural language processing techniques to detect shifts in trade-development doctrines guiding these IOs. After recognising key periods of significant normative change, selected cases will be investigated based on the framework and a set of hypotheses concerning the drivers of change. These case studies will involve in-depth analyses complemented by archival research and interviews with former officials. Ultimately, the findings from this project aim to illuminate the evolution of norms within the trade-development nexus. This research will contribute to ongoing debates in international political economy, development studies, and international organisations. From a policy perspective, the project will offer vital insights into the internal and external factors influencing shifts in trade policy direction at UNCTAD and the GATT/WTO.

CLIMTrade: Climate Concerns and Trade Policy

Integrating climate objectives into trade policy frameworks

The CLIMTrade project investigates the growing use of trade policy instruments to advance climate goals. It examines how trade and climate change intersect across multilateral platforms, minilateral settings such as Preferential Trade Agreements (PTAs), and unilateral measures that incorporate environmental objectives.

The project’s aims include:

Strengthening the empirical foundation of trade-climate interactions
Developing and testing new theoretical frameworks
Analyzing the preferences of international policy elites regarding the use of trade tools to address climate concerns

By providing novel data and systematic analysis, CLIMTrade supports a more nuanced understanding of the multidimensional relationship between trade and climate policy.

Project Lead: Manfred Elsig

Research Team: Noah Wheatley, Utkarsh Uprety, Julia Gubler

Supported by: SNSF

EDIT: Electronic Database of Investment Treaties

A comprehensive resource for investment treaty research and analysis

The Electronic Database of Investment Treaties (EDIT) is a publicly accessible, full-text database of more than 3,850 international investment agreements (IIAs). The database facilitates advanced research, policy analysis, and public engagement by improving access to treaty texts that shape the global investment regime.

EDIT was developed to:

Enhance transparency in international investment law
Support evidence-based policy reform and academic inquiry
Provide comparative tools for treaty analysis

Team: Wolfgang Alschner, Manfred Elsig and Rodrigo Polanco

Supported by: EDIT is a collaborative project between the World Trade Institute and the University of Ottawa, with support from the Swiss Network of International Studies (SNIS), the Canada Foundation for Innovation, and the World Bank.

DESTA: The Design of Trade Agreements

Systematic analysis of preferential trade agreements

The DESTA (Design of Trade Agreements) project offers the most comprehensive dataset on the design of preferential trade agreements (PTAs), including customs unions, free trade agreements, and partial scope agreements. Since its inception in 2009, DESTA has contributed to empirical and theoretical work on the legal architecture of trade agreements.

As of December 2023, the database includes over 746 manually coded PTAs covering the period from 1948 to 2023.

Founding Research team: Andreas Dür (University of Salzburg), Manfred Elsig (WTI), Leonardo Baccini (McGill University), Karolina Milewicz (Oxford University / Bayreuth University)

Supported by: Swiss National Science Foundation (SNF), Austrian Science Fund (FWF)

DESTA 3.0: Future Developments

A new phase, DESTA 3.0, launches in 2025 and introduces advanced computational methods, including large language models (LLMs), to analyze the content and evolution of PTAs. The project explores how trade agreement design affects global supply chains, marking a significant expansion in both methodology and scope.

DESTA 3.0 will be running over the next four years and explores how large language models (LLMs) can be used to analyze the content of preferential trade agreements (PTAs) and studies evolving dynamics between trade agreements and supply chain management.

This project aims to shed new light on the evolving relationship between trade agreements and global supply chain management, marking a significant methodological and thematic expansion of the DESTA research agenda.

Trade Agreements and Democracy (TRADEM)

The TRADEM project investigates the complex interrelationship between preferential trade agreements (PTAs) and democratic governance. The central objective is to identify and define democracy-related content within trade, namely at the World Trade Organisation (WTO) and PTAs, and thereafter discern the conditions under which international trade supports or constrains democratic institutions and processes.

Project lead: Led by Prof. Manfred Elsig, Managing Director and Director of Research at the World Trade Institute (WTI) at the University of Bern

Research team: Kirthana Ganeson, Marine Roux, Andrew Lugg

Supported by: SNSF

General Equilibrium Effects of Technical Non-Tariff Measures

Evaluating the economic impact of regulatory trade measures

Technical non-tariff measures (NTMs) are policy measures that often relate to product standards, safety, health, environmental protection, or labeling requirements. NTMs can affect imports and exports of goods by changing their quantities, prices, or both.

This study investigates the economic effects of changes in standard-like technical NTMs between 2012 and 2017, focusing on their impact on global trade patterns and real income. These include regulatory measures related to product safety, health standards, environmental protection, and labelling. The study underscores the importance of disaggregated modelling in evaluating policy impacts.

Key findings:

Technical NTMs have significantly altered trade patterns
Effects on global income were modest but uneven across countries and sectors
Regulatory harmonization remains a critical priority for reducing trade costs

Research team: Octavio Fernández-Amador, Joseph F. Francois, Achim Vogt

Supported by:
EU H2020 project “Better Agri-food Trade Modelling for Policy Analysis (BATModel)” – Grant No. 861932
Swiss National Science Foundation (SNF) project “Regulatory Heterogeneity in International Trade” – Project No. 178880

Past projects

PROSPER - Politics of Rule-making, Orchestration of Standards and Private Economic Regulations (2020-2022)
PROSPER is a 2-year project funded by the European Commission under the European Union Horizon2020 Marie Skłodowska-Curie individual fellowship programme. The project is run by Aydin Yildirim and hosted by the WTI and Manfred Elsig. The main objective of the project is to examine the role of multinational companies (MNCs) and their value chains across trade networks. It seeks to understand how and under which conditions MNCs can influence rules and standards in the global trade regime.

The Governance of Big Data in Trade Agreements: Design, Diffusion and Implications (2017-2020)
This research project is part of the National Research Programme (NRP) 75 Big Data. It brings together a small interdisciplinary research team, which will, in cooperation with the University of Lucerne, and under the leadership of Mira Burri, examine the pertinent trade rules that impinge on Big Data. The 3-year project started in May 2017 and seeks to achieve not only cutting-edge basic research results but also to have palpable policy impact.

Big Data website.

Common Concern (2015 - 2019)
Towards a Principle of Common Concern in Global Law: Foundations and Case Studies
The project explores the legal potential of the emerging doctrine of Common Concern of Humankind (‘Common Concern’) in responding to collective action problems due to the lack of appropriate institutions on the global and the European levels. It consists of a theoretical part and a series of in-depth case studies exploring the potential of the principle in different areas of public international law. The four case studies envisaged will analyse existing governance arrangements in the fields of: climate change; biodiversity, with a particular focus on the law of the sea; monetary affairs, and corporate responsibility and human rights. Funded by the Swiss National Science Foundation (SNSF) the project runs for three years from October 2015. The project is set to conclude in June 2019 and a book containing the research outcomes is planned to be published the same year.

CLISEL - Climate Security with local authorities (2016 - 2019)
CLISEL is a coordination and support action (CSA) funded under the Horizon 2020 Programme, which explores the climate-security nexus from the perspective of local administrations and communities. CLISEL proposed an innovative approach to the question of how Europe can be secured from the impacts of climate change in third countries. The aim is to understand the extent to which migrants are perceived as a security issue, as well as the policies and actions through which local administrators can ward off the emergence of a security crisis within their territory, with a special focus on the Italian region of Sardinia, taken as a pilot case study. The 36-month project, which started in May 2016, involves five institutions from around Europe, including the World Trade Institute (WTI). CLISEL is mainly involved in accompanying measures like dissemination, networking, coordination or support activities, policy dialogues and mutual learning exercises and studies in different countries.

CLISEL project website.

NCCR Trade Regulation (2005 - 2017)
The project aimed to clarify how the world trading system functions and to explore the drivers of fragmentation and coherence. It aims to offer policy recommendations based on the disciplines of law, economics and political science through its six thematic research areas: trade governance; new preferentialism in trade; innovation and creativity in international trade; trade, development and migration; trade and climate change; and impact assessment in international trade regulation.

DESTA
An off-shoot of the NCCR, the Design of Trade Agreements collaborative research project collected systematic data on the design of preferential trade agreements signed since 1945. More information can be found on the DESTA website.

SECO
The SECO/WTI Academic Cooperation Project was a comprehensive six-year capacity building project aimed at academic training in trade regulation and building regional research capacities. It was initiated and funded by the Swiss State Secretariat for Economic Affairs (SECO) and the World Trade Institute was its implementing agency.

SNIS
Diffusion of International Law: A Textual Analysis of International Investment Agreements
This collaborative project examined the question, 'What are the design, evolution and effects of the international investment agreements currently in practice?' Led by the WTI, it involved universities in Switzerland and abroad as well as the World Bank Group.

r4d Employment
The aim of this project that ran from 2014 to 2017 was to reveal the impact of various development policy instruments on the quality and quantity of employment in six developing countries: Bangladesh, Ethiopia, Ghana, Madagascar, South Africa and Vietnam.

For a full list of r4d working papers and policy briefs, visit our r4d publications archive. The r4d brochure can be found here.

PRONTO - Productivity, non-tariff barriers and openness
A collaborative research project on regulatory barriers to trade, supported by the European Commission, PRONTO aimed to build a network across the research and stakeholder communities working on a better understanding of non-tariff measures affecting international trade and investment. The first phase ended in 2017. The second phase involves cooperation with UN agencies. Partial funding was provided through the SNSF.