Political units often spatially depend in their policy choices on other units. This also holds in dyadic settings where, as in much of international relations research, the focus of the analysis is the pair or dyad of two political units. Yet, with few exceptions, social scientists have analyzed...

This paper models a multilateral agreement on investment (MAI) as a coordination device. Multinational enterprises can invest in any number of countries. Without a multilateral investment agreement, expropriation triggers an investment stop by the single MNE. Under a multilateral agreement,...

In many parts of sub-Saharan Africa, economic liberalisation, improved transport and communication systems and the global demand for food, energy and commodities have fostered foreign investment in mining, petroleum and agriculture for food, fuel and agro-industrial commodities. In 2008 foreign...

The rapid rise in global fragmentation - foreign investment, global supply chains, and 'production sharing' - is fundamentally reshaping the multilateral trading system. This paper uses a simple economic modeling framework to understand how the global fragmentation phenomenon may reshape the...

International investment agreements can have detrimental effects for developing countries: they can limit a government's ability to regulate in the public interest where this interest runs counter to that of foreign investors; they can severely restrict a country's ability to enact measures...