The Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement (‘TPP'), which was signed in November 2015 by the United States, Japan, Canada, Mexico, Peru, Chile, Brunei, Malaysia, Singapore, Australia, New Zealand, and Vietnam, is arguably the most significant trade and international investment protection deal...

Countermeasures are well recognized under Customary International Law and have been incorporated into the WTO Dispute Settlement Understanding as a mechanism to facilitate compliance, subject to an authorization by the WTO Dispute Settlement Body. However, such a countermeasure — increased...

This Concept Paper addresses some of the issues raised with respect to the development of an APEC Investment Treaty Handbook. The Paper proceeds as follows. Part 1 sets out the legal and governance challenges posed by investment treaties, giving rise to the need for a resource like the APEC...

Over the years, the substantive content of international investment agreements (IIAs) has shifted to reflect political change and to respond to lessons learnt in investor-state dispute settlement (ISDS). With a focus on eight IIAs, selected with a view to geographical representativeness, this...

This contribution to a Festschrift for Dr. SKB Asante, the leading in-house expert on matters related to investment policy-making at the United Nations Centre on Transnational Corporations, discusses a number of issues related to investment policy-making at the national and international levels...

Empirical research on the impact of investment treaties has focused almost exclusively on their effect on foreign investment, with mixed results. Yet, another important promise of the treaties has been ignored altogether. Architects of the investment treaty regime, as well as many current...

This article makes a major contribution to the emerging Belt and Road Initiative scholarship (and international economic law) by highlighting that (i)China’s existing investment treaty network along the Belt and Road is dated, (ii) many or most of those treaties include Most Favored Nation...

This paper scrutinizes the effects of investor-state dispute settlements (ISDS) and national treatment provisions in a two-period model where foreign investment is subject to domestic regulation and a holdup problem. It shows that ISDS can mitigate the holdup problem and increases aggregate...