Given the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) and several intra-Asian agreements, the EU is focused on large-sized free trade agreements (FTAs) to avoid trade diversion and to maintain Europe's ability to set the trade policy agenda. The EU is now negotiating with all TPP countries except Australia,...

Der zwischen Deutschland und Pakistan 1959 geschlossene Investitionsschutzvertrag gilt gemeinhin als Meilenstein in der Entwicklung des völkerrechtlichen Investitionsschutzes. Als erster bilateral investment treaty (BIT) ist er in das kollektive Gedächtnis eingegangen. In unserem vorliegenden...

Advance consent clauses are the crux of modern bilateral investment treaties. By giving investors direct access to arbitration against states, they make the substantive promises of the treaties credible. They are responsible for the exponential increase in the number of investor-state...

Economic theory has made considerable progress in explaining why sovereign countries cooperate in trade. Central to most theories of trade cooperation are issues of self-enforcement: The threat of reprisal by an aggrieved party maintains the initial balance of concessions and prevents...

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...

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...

This paper constitutes an attempt to reframe and eventually deflate the ongoing 'compliance-vs.-rebalancing' debate which has permeated WTO scholarship for the last 10 years. Our main criticism concerns the substance of the entire debate. We find that scholars on both sides of the...