How much do U.S. corporations know (and care) about bilateral investmenttreaties? Some hints from new survey evidence

New evidence shows that top U.S. corporations are surprisingly unfamiliar with -- and/or lack confidence in -- bilateral investment treaties that are designed to benefit their investments in other countries. To understand whether or not such treaties "work," it is necessary to find out how and why they do, or do not, form part of firms' investment decision-making

Eli Lilly and the International Investment Law Challenge to a Neo-Federal IP Regime

This Article examines the implications of the Eli Lilly case-and international investment law (IIL) more generally-for the operation of an international intellectual property (IP) regime that functions along the lines of the neo-federalist model developed by Professors Dinwoodie and Dreyfuss. The neo-federalist model involves a world in which the international IP regime grants national political communities substantial discretion to pursue their own visions of the normatively proper balance between the rights of IP creators and of those who seek to use it. Importantly, that discretion involves the ability to alter the existing normative balance in either the direction of more or fewer rights for IP creators. Under this view, the international IP regime is not, and should not be construed, either as a universal and comprehensive IP code, nor as a one-way ratchet that only permits member-state experimentation in favor of IP creators. Yet, that sort of systemic rigidity is precisely what the claimant in Eli Lilly sought to impose through the IIL regime. While it is true that the claimant, Eli Lilly, lost its case, a close reading of the award, along with an appreciation of the dynamics of HL, suggests that substantial danger remains. Using Eli Lilly as a case study, this Article explores the challenges that the IL system poses for the realization of the neo-federalist vision

The lobbying you have never heard of: targeting the US President’s Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs

Lobbying has become a pervasive part of American politics with hundreds of organizations lobbying bills across thousands of issues. But, write Simon F. Haeder and Susan Webb Yackee, legislative lobbying is only half the story. In new research, they look at the lobbying of federal rulemaking agencies, such as the President’s Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA). They find that despite a lack of media coverage, intense lobbying of OIRA occurs, as evidenced by the often substantive changes in OIRA’s final rules compared to the draft rules submitted for review

Analytical framework for assessing costs and benefits of investment protection treaties

This report considers the opportunities and challenges for the UK, both for its bilateral investment treaties (BITs) and through the new generation of European investment treaties. This framework is intended to help make policy choices when assessing the implications of a particular investment treaty. It has been used in producing the reports on proposed EU-China and EU-US agreements

Costs and Benefits of an EU-China Investment Protection Treaty

This report assesses the likely costs and benefits for the UK of an investment protection treaty between the European Union and the People’s Republic of China

Costs and Benefits of an EU-US Investment Protection Treaty

This report assesses the likely costs and benefits for the UK of an investment protection treaty between the European Union and the United States of America

While Congress sits on its hands, presidents are making policy by regulation

Despite what most of the public may think, the vast majority of policymaking by the federal government comes in the form of rules and regulations rather than through new laws. Using the 2010 Affordable Care Act as a case study, Simon F. Haeder and Susan Webb Yackee write that the move from law-based to regulatory policymaking has given Democratic and Republican presidents alike unprecedented powers that often do not need to take into account the views of Congress

Sacrificing sovereignty: bilateral investment treaties, international arbitration, and the quest for capital

This dissertation examines the phenomenon of bilateral investment treaties, or BITs. Developing countries have increasingly turned to these treaties as a means of offering credible promises to foreign investors of favorable treatment, ostensibly in order to induce greater investment flows. My analysis is three-pronged. First, I argue that only certain kinds of BITs are likely to have much of an effect on investment flows-namely, those that contain binding state pre-consents to investor-initiated arbitration. I present the first comprehensive analysis of the dispute-settlement content of existing treaties. This data-collection effort informs the statistical analyses presented in later chapters. Second, I argue that the willingness of developing countries to enter into BITs should depend in predictable ways on the partisan character of their governing elites. I present results from a large-n statistical analysis that shows that partisanship indeed matters in predicting the likelihood that BITs will be embraced as a mechanism to attract foreign investment. Finally, I present a large-n statistical analysis of the effectiveness of BITs at attracting additional foreign investment. I find very limited evidence that strong BITs are of much use in the so-called "competition for capital". The finding is of great potential significance to developing countries, who have in the past appeared to blindly embrace BITs as a significant part of their development strategies. My results suggest that while BITs may be likely to impose significant sovereignty costs on developing countries, they are unlikely to provide much in the way of off-setting benefits