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,...

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...

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...