We focus on investor-state dispute settlement provisions contained in various, though far from all, bilateral investment treaties as a possible determinant of BIT-related effects on bilateral FDI flows. Our estimation results prove to be sensitive to the specification of these provisions as well...

The previous literature provides a highly ambiguous picture on the impact of trade and investment agreements on FDI. Most empirical studies ignore the actual content of BITs and RTAs, treating them as "black boxes", despite the diversity of investment provisions constituting the essence of these...

International Investment Law (IIL), like international trade law, has an economic rationale as its background. Nevertheless, this economic rationale and the empirical insights into assumed causal links play a much smaller role than in trade law. Whereas in trade law economic insights have found...

Estimating two-step selection models, we find that more democratic governments are more likely to conclude preferential trade agreements (PTAs) and to agree to stricter investment provisions related to pre-establishment national treatment and investor-state dispute settlement in PTAs. This is...

ISDS is at a crossroads and many alternative solutions have been proposed for reforming the system. One has been neglected in the discussion: the role of joint commissions of the state parties resolving certain problems in investment treaties. This alternative 'withdraws' interpretative...

States write incomplete contracts when negotiating and concluding international treaties. Often, they delegate the interpretation of treaties to third-party adjudicators. Some treaties, especially in environmental law, do not institutionalize adjudication within the treaty regime but leave the...

The discussions about International Investment Law (IIL) are slowly catching up with the discussions about international trade law in two respects: the first is the social science, especially economic, enrichment of the legal discourse, the second is the discussion on fragmentation of...