Policy and Practice Research Lab

Initiative on International Economic Integration

PI: Jeffrey Bergstrand (Finance, Mendoza College of Business)

The Initiative on International Economic Integration examines issues surrounding the economic integration agreements (EIAs) – such as free trade agreements – of the United States and other countries, with the goal of developing a framework and process for influencing trade and foreign direct investment policies.

The Initiative is led by Faculty Fellow Jeffrey Bergstrand, a professor in the Department of Finance at the Mendoza College of Business, and also a concurrent professor in the Department of Economics in the College of Arts and Letters and in the Keough School of Global Affairs. 

Over the last few years, Bergstrand provided testimony (in 2018) to the US International Trade Commission (US ITC) on the potential economic benefits and costs of the (proposed) United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA), several talks (in 2019) at universities in South Africa on the potential economic benefits and costs of the (proposed) African Continental Free Trade Agreement, testimony (in 2020) to the USITC on the ex post benefits and costs of US free trade agreements for a US ITC report to the US Congress, a keynote address (in 2020) on the topic of "Future Directions for Trade-Policy Modeling" at the US ITC conference "Recent Advances in Trade-Policy Modeling and Applications in Emerging Areas," and the lead address (in 2021) at the US ITC Workshop "Modeling Foreign Direct Investment."  In November 2021, the US ITC and the University of Notre Dame's Keough School of Global Affairs and Kellogg Institute for International Studies held a (virtual) symposium on "Deep Trade Agreements: Measurement and Impact," organized jointly by Jeffrey Bergstrand and US ITC co-organizers Saad Ahmad and Wen Jin (Jean) Yuan.