Maintaining rapid economic growth depends increasingly on productivity gains, particularly in the service sector. Competition has an important role to play in achieving such gains. However, Korea’s development strategy has tended to weaken competition and has left a legacy of government...

The recent surge in competition between state and private firms in global markets calls for a reflection on how to minimise any potentially distortionary effects on international trade and investment created by state enterprises while at the same time restraining any undue protectionist policy...

Economic growth is below what would be needed to resume rapid convergence to average OECD living standards. On-going efforts to improve the business climate are laudable, but need to be widened and strengthened. Much progress has been achieved in reducing red tape, but it is only recently that...

While to an economist, business person or policy maker, movement of goods, services and foreign direct investment should logically be covered in the same agreement, history has not allowed this to happen. International legal regimes are spinning into greater fragmentation as the number of...

Based on a comprehensive treaty survey, the article presents the general approaches to sustainable development goals (SDGs) in Chinese International Investment Agreements (IIAs). With the global trend towards investor responsibilisation, a new generation of investment policies places inclusive...

In 2007, the U.S. Congress passed the Foreign Investment in the United States Act (FINSA), the most recent in a series of calibrations to a basic regulatory framework that is now nearly 40 years old. FINSA has particularly significant effects on investment by sovereign wealth funds (SWFs) and...

As our societies face new challenges and make new demands from policies addressing international investment, there is a new urgency to profoundly reconsider treaties addressing investment. This paper was prepared originally as background for initial inter-governmental and public discussions at...

Investment treaty policy increasingly interacts with business responsibilities. This scoping paper first surveys the converging approaches to responsible business conduct (RBC) and business and human rights (BHR) as reflected in the OECD Guidelines for Multinational Enterprises, the United...

The use of arbitration in investor-state dispute settlement (ISDS) enables foreign investors to sue host states for alleged breaches of international investment law. But the practise has grown increasingly controversial over the past decade, with respondent states refusing to pay damages, or...

This article explores the complex issues relating to the inclusion of intellectual property rights (IPRs) as an ‘investment’ in international investment agreements (IIAs). The potential impact of IPRs in IIAs on the regulatory sovereignty of a nation has for some time been underappreciated...