New evidence shows that top U.S. corporations are surprisingly unfamiliar with – and/or lack confidence in – bilateral investment treaties that are designed to benefit their investments in other countries. To understand whether or not such treaties "work", it is necessary to find out how and...

In late 2008, as financial markets were crashing, the Vale Columbia Center on Sustainable International Investment launched the Columbia FDI Perspectives. The first Perspective, entitled “The FDI recession has begun,” correctly forecast an FDI recession in the following year. From that first...

We provide the first empirical assessment of the ossification thesis, the widely accepted notion that procedural constraints on federal agencies have greatly hindered the ability of those agencies to formulate policy through notice and comment rule-making. Using data that cover all active...