Different investment treaties, different effects

Until recently, quantitative assessments of International Investment Agreements (IIAs) have tended to treat them as interchangeable. Such assessments assume that the only measure of investor protections encoded in IIAs is whether a treaty had been signed and/or entered into force. However, the actual investment effects of investment treaties depend greatly on context

不同的投资协定具有不同的效应

直到最近，国际投资协定的定量评估（IIAS）都倾向于将它们视为可互换的。这样的评估假设，国际投资协议中编码的唯一的投资者保护措施是，一项条约是否已签署和/或生效。然而，投资条约的实际投资效果很大程度上取决于具体情况

When does liberalization matter? Policy signaling and investor response.

Since the end of the Bretton Woods international monetary system, global trends exhibit both a dramatic expansion of capital flows and a broad movement towards liberalization of financial policies. The simultaneity of these two trends is often cited as evidence for a direct relationship between policy and flows, but at the country level, this relationship is more complicated. Many countries restrict capital flows but continue to receive investment, while others allow capital mobility but fail to attract investment. Using a signaling model framework, I argue that investment policy conveys information to investors about leaders' attitudes towards the market, but that the informational content of those policies varies according to the domestic and external circumstances. I test these arguments with both panel data and country case studies. Focusing on the case of foreign direct investment, I find that leaders who allow capital mobility in the face of political and economic pressures for restriction are more likely to obtain increased investment flows. Furthermore, small countries that risk capital flight at the time of liberalization are more likely to induce a larger foreign investment response to liberalization than those who liberalize under more favorable circumstances.Ph.D.FinanceInternational lawSocial SciencesUniversity of Michigan, Horace H. Rackham School of Graduate Studieshttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/124532/2/3150064.pd

Delegating Differences: Bilateral Investment Treaties and Bargaining Over Dispute Resolution Provisions

Bilateral investment treaties (BITs) have become the dominant source of rules on foreign direct investment (FDI), yet these treaties vary significantly in at least one important respect: whether they allow investment disputes to be settled through the International Centre for the Settlement of Investment Disputes (ICSID). Through the compilation and careful coding of the text of nearly 1,500 treaties, we identify systematic variation in “legal delegation” to ICSID across BITs and explain this important variation by drawing upon a bargaining framework. Home governments prefer and typically obtain ICSID clauses in their BITs, particularly when internal forces push strongly for such provisions and when they have significantly greater bargaining power than the other signatory. Yet some home governments are less likely to insist upon ICSID clauses if they have historical or military ties with the other government. On the other hand, although host governments are often hostile toward ICSID clauses, particularly when sovereignty costs are high, they are more likely to consent to such clauses when they are heavily constrained by their dependence on the global economy. Our findings have significant implications for those interested in FDI, legalization, international institutions, and interstate bargaining

Bilateral treaty networks: assessing cooperative spillover in defense and investment

The potential for mutual influence or “spillover” between economic and security cooperation is a longstanding area of interest for policymakers and scholars alike. This paper examines how network dynamics affect spillover. We focus on two prominent types of formal bilateral cooperation—defense cooperation agreements (DCAs) and bilateral investment treaties (BITs)—both of which have proliferated dramatically in the post-Cold War international system. We argue that existing theoretical and empirical approaches to economic-security spillover focus too strictly on influences at the bilateral level. As with other forms of international cooperation, BITs and DCAs comprise larger international networks. Governments develop portfolios of BITs or DCAs with distinct structural goals in mind, and they implement specific strategies in pursuing those goals. With BITs, governments follow a network-hierarchy strategy that allows them to influence treaty design and protect their firms. In DCAs, governments instead favor a network-community strategy focused on pooling collective security goods among groups of like-minded collaborators. When these network strategies complement one another, they promote cooperative economic-security spillover. When they conflict, however, they inhibit spillover, such that cooperation in economic or security issues discourages cooperation in the opposing issue area

Replication Data for: Learning and the Precision of International Investment Agreements

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