Do bilateral investment treaties increase foreign direct investment to developing countries?

Foreign investors are often skeptical toward the quality of the domestic institutions and the enforceability of the law in developing countries. Bilateral Investment Treaties (BITs) guarantee certain standards of treatment that can be enforced via binding investor-to- state dispute settlement outside the domestic juridical system. Developing countries accept restrictions on their sovereignty in the hope that the protection from political and other risks leads to an increase in foreign direct investment (FDI), which is also the stated purpose of BITs. We provide the first rigorous quantitative evidence that a higher number of BITs raises the FDI that flows to a developing country. This result is very robust to changes in model specification, estimation technique and sample size. There is also some limited evidence that BITs might function as substitutes for good domestic institutional quality, but this result is not robust to different specifications of institutional quality.Foreign direct investment, bilateral investment treaties, institutional quality, protection, risk

Urban versus rural mortality among older adults in China

For some time, Chinese government policies have treated rural and urban areas very differently, and a by-product of China’s rapid development seems to be an even greater differentiation between urban and rural social and economic life. Over the next several decades, in part because of rapid fertility declines and in part as a result of mortality declines at older ages, China and other developing countries will experience enormous increases in the proportion of older adults and the proportion of the “oldest-old.” It is reasonable to expect that these age structure changes will alter the provision of health care, making an understanding of the determinants of health at older ages critical for the development and implementation of policy. The analysis in this Population Council working paper describes differences in mortality and examines the extent to which variations are accounted for by socioeconomic and health-access and health-availability characteristics that are measured at individual and community levels. On the individual level, cadre status is influential and at the community level, the important measure is the number of amenities available to residents

Poverty and fertility: Evidence and agenda

This paper explores how poverty affects childbearing patterns in the contemporary developing world. In considering the association between poverty and fertility, we explore one measure of economic status, household asset holdings, in Demographic and Health Surveys conducted in 51 countries since 1990. The results show that the association between poverty and fertility differs according to the measure of fertility considered. We conclude there is much to be gained from distinguishing between the impact of poverty on fertility aspirations and the implementation of those aspirations

Do bilateral investment treaties increase foreign direct investment to developing countries?

Foreign investors are often skeptical toward the quality of the domestic institutions and the enforceability of the law in developing countries. Bilateral Investment Treaties (BITs) guarantee certain standards of treatment that can be enforced via binding investor-to-state dispute settlement outside the domestic juridical system. Developing countries accept restrictions on their sovereignty in the hope that the protection from political and other risks leads to an increase in foreign direct investment (FDI), which is also the stated purpose of BITs. We provide the first rigorous quantitative evidence that a higher number of BITs raises the FDI that flows to a developing country. This result is very robust to changes in model specification, estimation technique and sample size. There is also some limited evidence that BITs might function as substitutes for good domestic institutional quality, but this result is not robust to different specifications of institutional quality