Replication Data for: Who Settles Disputes? Treaty Design and Trade Attitudes Toward the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP)

What type of trade agreement is the public willing to accept? Instead of focusing on individual concerns about market access and trade barriers, we argue that specific treaty design and, in particular, the characteristics of the dispute settlement mechanism, play a critical role in shaping public support for trade agreements. To examine this theoretical expectation, we conduct a conjoint experiment that varies diverse treaty-design elements and estimate preferences over multiple dimensions of the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) based on a nationally representative sample in Germany. We find that compared to other alternatives, private arbitration, known as investor-state dispute settlement (ISDS), generates strong opposition to the trade agreement. As the single most important factor, this effect of dispute settlement characteristic is strikingly large and consistent across individuals’ key attributes, including skill levels, information, and national sentiment, among others.

公众愿意接受何种类型的贸易协定？我们认为，不应仅聚焦于市场准入与贸易壁垒等个体关切，条约的具体设计——尤其是争端解决机制的特征——在塑造公众对贸易协定的支持度方面发挥着关键作用。为验证这一理论预期，我们开展了一项联合实验，通过改变多种条约设计要素，基于德国具有全国代表性的样本，估算公众对跨大西洋贸易与投资伙伴关系（TTIP）多维度的偏好。研究发现，与其他替代方案相比，被称为投资者-国家争端解决机制（investor-state dispute settlement，ISDS）的私人仲裁，引发了公众对该贸易协定的强烈反对。作为唯一最重要的因素，争端解决机制特征的这一效应显著且强烈，并在个体的关键属性（包括技能水平、信息掌握程度及国民情绪等）中表现出一致性。