PID Seminar: Trade Agreements’ Environment Provisions: Insight from a Novel Dataset

Jean-Frédéric Morin, Associate professor, Université Laval, Québec, Canada

Abstract: Trade agreements increasingly include ambitious environmental provisions. Despite the encompassing nature of these provisions, studies on their drivers and consequences remain scarce. Until recently, the main factor hindering research in this area was the lack of reliable data. This presentation will discuss a new dataset, the Trade & Environmental Database (TREND). This dataset documents 280 types of environmental provisions in 680 trade agreements signed between 1947 and 2016. The database is of particular relevance for research on institutional design, legal innovation, regime complexity, policy diffusion, and treaty effectiveness

Bio: Jean-Frédéric Morin is a senior fellow with CIGI’s International Law Research Program (ILRP), effective May 2016. He is also associate professor at Laval University, where he holds the Canada Research Chair in International Political Economy.

At CIGI, Jean-Frédéric is contributing to the ILRP’s research themes on international intellectual property, and environmental and economic laws by building a large database, sponsored by the Canadian Foundation for Innovation, CIGI and Laval University. This database will document institutional interactions among trade, investment and environmental institutions. It will enable Jean-Frédéric and other CIGI researchers to study the emergence, variation, diffusion, implementation and effectiveness of hundreds of different provisions found in thousands of multilateral, regional and bilateral agreements.

Before being invited to hold the Canada Research Chair in International Political Economy, Jean-Frédéric was a professor at Université libre de Bruxelles from 2008 to 2014, and a post-doctoral researcher at McGill University from 2006 to 2008.

Jean-Frédéric has an interdisciplinary training in law and political science, and has taught in law programs as well as in political science programs. He is currently conducting research in the fields of trade policy, investment law, global environmental politics, and international intellectual property law, with a particular interest in studying how transnational networks shape the interactions of international institutions.

His recent publications have appeared in leading journals such as International Studies Quarterly, European Journal of International Relations, Review of International Studies, European Journal of International Relations, International Studies Review, Global Governance, and Review of International Political Economy.