Impact Of Bilateral Investment Treaties Research Articles

Do bilateral investment treaties help post-coup countries attract foreign investment?

Studies of international investment treaties have debated whether these agreements independently increase foreign investment flows. This article contributes to the debate by contextualizing the impact of bilateral investment treaties on post-coup domestic political environments. We argue that these treaties enable capital-receiving countries to live up to their commitments of investment protection and promote foreign investment when signatories’ capacity for investor protection has been compromised by the political turmoil of coup events. Using a sample that covers 81 countries between 1970 and 2017, we find that bilateral investment treaties are positively associated with foreign investment in post-coup countries, and that this association is strongest in the immediate years following the coup and attenuates gradually over time. This finding potentially lends support to theorizations of bilateral investment treaties as substitutes, rather than complements, to domestic institutions in fostering investment activities.

Bilateral investment treaties and sovereign default risk: Evidence for emerging markets

AbstractThis paper analyses the impact of bilateral investment treaties (BITs) on sovereign default risk using monthly data for 29 emerging markets from 1996 to 2016. Under a BIT, foreign investors can use an international arbitration scheme to enforce compensation claims against the host country's government. We focus on the so far unexplored legal risk associated with BITs since a higher likelihood of government expropriations implicitly increases public debt. We do not find a significant unconditional effect of BITs on sovereign default risk (measured by the month‐over‐month percentage change in a country's Emerging Market Bond Index). Considering the heterogeneity of BITs and political risk, we find robust and strong negative effects of BITs on sovereign bond returns. In countries with high political risk of expropriation (measured by low executive constraints), we find that the implementation of BITs with strong investor protection is associated with a significantly negative impact on sovereign bond returns (−0.45 percentage points), which compares to roughly 11.7% of bond returns' monthly standard deviation.

One-size-does-not-fit-all: The heterogeneous impact of BITs on regions participating in GPNs

Bilateral Investment Treaties (BITs) are vital for safeguarding and enhancing foreign investments, pivotal in Global Production Networks (GPNs). This study assesses the impact of BITs on GPNs driven by EU multinational enterprises, with a focus on regions hosting corporate headquarters due to their influence on the local economy. While considering the endogeneity of BITs and their diverse effects on GPN structures, our findings reveal a positive correlation between BITs and GPNs, notably stronger in less globally integrated regions. Additionally, the influence varies based on firms' network role (headquarters or subsidiaries) and the spatial distribution of headquarters. BITs stimulate GPNs in less internationalized regions but have minimal impact in headquarters-rich regions.

The Impact of Bilateral Investment Treaties on Foreign Investment in Iran: Gravity Model Approach

The Impact of Bilateral Investment Treaties on Foreign Investment in Iran: Gravity Model Approach

The impact of unilateral BIT terminations on FDI: Quasi-experimental evidence from India

This study identifies the impact of Bilateral Investment Treaties (BITs) on foreign direct investments (FDI) by taking advantage of the random timing of 44 unilateral BIT terminations in India between 2013 and 2019. Using quarterly bilateral data of 138 foreign investors’ home countries (FIHCs), our difference-in-differences (DD) estimates uncover a significant reduction in FDI inflows to India in response to BIT terminations by more than 30 percent compared to countries without terminations. We identify the sudden break with investor protection for new investments as the major transmission channel. Further investigations suggest that investors do not necessarily abandon India in response to BIT terminations but apparently reroute FDI via FIHCs with BITs. Evidence from firm-level data reveals that investors revoke or reroute mainly deals (e.g. mergers and acquisitions) rather than own new projects. Moreover, similarity of some legal institutions with India offsets the negative effect of BIT terminations.

The Impact of Bilateral Investment Treaties on FDI Inflows Into India: Some Empirical Results

After a run of adverse investor-state dispute settlements, India has recently denounced all its erstwhile investment treaties. New investment treaties need to be negotiated on the basis of a new Model Treaty that privilege state rights over investor rights. We study the impact of bilateral investment treaties on foreign direct investment (FDI) inflows into India before the denunciation with the intent of inferring the consequences of changing the system. Our work captures the effects of international investment agreements on FDI inflows specifically into India. We construct an empirical model drawing on the Gravity Model, and estimate parameters using generalised method of moments. The results show that while the individual signing of bilateral investment treaties does not influence the inflow of FDI, the effect of the cumulative bilateral investment treaties signed is statistically very significant—suggesting that the spill over effect of signing a series of bilateral investment treaties are important, signalling a regime of overall protection to investors. The importance of institutional variables in influencing FDI tells us that overall participation in a system governed by international investor agreements influenced the inflow of FDI positively and therefore recent policy changes should be viewed with caution. JEL Codes: F21, F23, F550, F63, K33, O19, C22, C29

Impact of bilateral investment treaties on foreign direct investment in Africa

AbstractAfrica continues to face several challenges that make its share of global foreign direct investment (FDI) to be infinitesimal. These include the prevalence of fragmented investment policies, information asymmetry and high sovereign risk. Bilateral investment treaties (BITs) can help overcome some of these encumbrances by signalling the host country's willingness to protect FDIs. This study hypothesizes that BITs can play an augmentation role and investigates their impact on FDI attraction using data across 48 African countries from 2000 to 2018. In contrast to the previous theoretical and most empirical literature, results based on the two‐step systems generalized method of moments (GMM) show that ratified BITs do not perform a significant role in FDI attraction. Nonetheless, the additional analyses allowed us to make some rather non‐trivial conclusions about the possible effects of BITs concluded with France on FDI. The study recommends that countries should participate in some BITs, although governments need to be cautious when tying their hands with BITs because of susceptibility to damaging litigations that sometimes follow, irrespective of the less than commensurate benefits.

BITs, Colony Ties, and Offshore Centers: The Case of United Kingdom Outward FDI

This paper empirically investigates the impact of bilateral investment treaties (BITs) on foreign direct investment (FDI) using data on British multinational firms’ outward FDI in a panel of 140 countries across 2009-2017. We apply the Knowledge-Capital model to demonstrate that BITs act as a market access mechanism to parent country multinational enterprises. Our core result confirms the negative impact of BIT membership on horizontal FDI in the host economy. This result is robust to changes in partner sample composition, hypothetical stock levels, and inclusion of trade policies. Our findings imply that factor cost advantages are unable to compensate for the adverse effect of BIT entry, which raises concerns regarding the potency of BIT-centered development policies.

Foreign direct investment and institutional environment: the impact of bilateral investment treaties

ABSTRACT Institutional factors are a critical driving force for the rapid growth of outward foreign direct investment (FDI) in developing countries. This article attempts to explain how developing countries can take advantage of bilateral investment treaties (BITs) to reduce investment uncertainties caused by informal institutional distance and help domestic companies invest abroad. The results confirm that the cultural difference between China and a host country is negatively associated with the likelihood of FDI entry into the host country. BITs function as a substitute for the host country’s institutional environment by reducing investment uncertainties caused by cultural distance. Moreover, state-owned enterprises are less responsive to BITs in host countries than private enterprises, suggesting that private firms rely more on BITs to reduce their investment risks abroad.

Can foreign direct investment promote BIT signing?

Compared to the vast number of previous studies on the impact of bilateral investment treaties (BITs) on Foreign Direct Investment (FDI), this paper empirically analyses how previous FDI affects BIT signing by using annual data covering 258 countries for the period 2002–2012. We find that the likelihood of signing BITs between two countries is higher when the country-pair has a larger sum of FDI stock and a larger FDI difference, and this effect is more pronounced in middle- and low-income countries than high-income countries. Further research finds that the institutional gap is an important factor that can enhance the positive impact of FDI stock/ FDI difference on the signing of BITs. The contribution of this research lies in providing a benchmark for incorporating more economic variables into the understanding of the determinants of BIT signing. In particular, the role of FDI should be given more attention.

Bilateral Investment Treaty and Overseas M&A of Chinese Companies：Evidence from a Quasi-natural Experiment

As an important legal document signed between two countries to promote and protect investment, bilateral investment treaties play an important role in bilateral international investment. This paper intends to answer the following questions: What is the impact of bilateral investment treaties on Chinese companies’ overseas mergers and acquisitions（M&A）? What is the impact mechanism? How should Chinese companies take advantage of the effect of bilateral investment treaties on overseas M&A, so as to expand the scale and scope of overseas M&A while promoting the success of M&A?Based on the progressive difference-in-difference model, this paper delves into the theoretical mechanism and impact of bilateral investment treaties on Chinese companies’ overseas M&A by using bilateral investment treaties as a quasi-natural experiment with the country panel data of 140 countries from 2004 to 2018. It comes to the following conclusions: Firstly, compared with countries that have not signed bilateral investment treaties, bilateral investment treaties have a significant positive effect on Chinese companies’ willingness to acquire overseas and successful M&A. Secondly, in terms of dynamic effects, bilateral investment treaties have a long-term effect on the promotion of Chinese companies’ overseas M&A, and their volatility has increased. Thirdly, the promotion effect of bilateral investment treaties is significantly heterogeneous. The promotion effect of bilateral investment treaties is more significant in Asia and Africa, stronger in high-quality countries and developed countries, and stronger in non-state-owned companies. Fourthly, the expansibility test shows that the quality of the text of bilateral investment treaties have a significant promoting effect on China’s overseas M&A. Fifthly, through the decomposition and quantification of the specific provisions of investment treaties, “Definition and Scope of Investment”“Fair and Equitable Treatment” and “Most Favored Nation Treatment” are the key provisions that affect the promotion of China’s overseas M&A in bilateral investment treaties. This paper enriches the research theory in the field of bilateral investment treaties and overseas M&A relations, provides policy revelations for Chinese companies’ overseas M&A and the new round of bilateral investment treaty practices, and contributes Chinese wisdom to global economic governance.In short, this paper contributes to the existing research in the following three perspectives: Firstly, it specifically examines the impact of bilateral investment treaties on the number of Chinese companies’ M&A cases and successful M&A cases in a more in-depth way. Secondly, it uses bilateral investment treaties as a quasi-natural experiment, and conducts an empirical research based on the progressive difference-in-difference model. It also explores the impact of the text quality of investment treaties, and examines the internal mechanism of bilateral investment treaties from the dimensions of investment definition and scope, fair and equitable treatment, national treatment, most-favored-nation treatment, expropriation compensation, umbrellas, and investment dispute settlement based on the specific terms of investment treaties. Lastly, it lays an important empirical foundation for deepening bilateral investment treaties and promoting overseas M&A by Chinese companies, as well as for building a scientific and reasonable bilateral investment treaty system and promoting the formation of a new pattern of comprehensive opening.

Bilateral investment treaties and backward linkages in Sub-Saharan Africa

This article is an original contribution to the understanding of the impact of bilateral investment treaties in developing countries. By exploiting a unique sample of foreign affiliates in nineteen Sub-Saharan Africa countries, we show that the presence of a bilateral investment treaty between FDI origin and destination countries is positively related to the propensity of foreign investors to generate linkages to local suppliers. In addition, we find evidence that such relationship is stronger for countries with lower institutional quality and that bilateral investment treaties become more effective the larger the difference in levels of development between source and host. The estimation technique we use is a two-limit Tobit model. Our results are of high importance from a political point of view. They support the argument that bilateral investment treaties can help countries with low levels of governance quality, as several Sub-Saharan African countries, to credibly remedy local institutional inefficiencies and, therefore, the participation in an international treaty make the opportunities for local sourcing more likely. These potential gains can justify the decision of policymakers in developing countries to sign BITs, despite such agreements impinging on their national sovereignty.

The Economic and Institutional Determinants of Foreign Direct Investments

This paper aims to investigate the economic and institutional determinants of Foreign Direct Investment in the world post-2000. To this end, I analyze the inwards stocks of FDIs using unilateral and bilateral data. Based on the UNCTAD database, I also study the impact of Bilateral Investment Treaties on the inflow of FDIs. Main results provide evidence supporting the idea that treaties increase the inflows of FDIs in the years following their signature. However, regulations aimed at increasing the protection of property rights have a larger effect on the attractiveness for investors. This paper does not find robust evidence demonstrating that political stability and corruption level have significant effects. More, I demonstrate that an increase of tariffs in the host country results in an increase of FDIs, supposedly due to relocation processes.

The Impact of Unilateral Bilateral Investment Treaties Terminations on FDI: Evidence from a Natural Experiment

This paper attempts a new way of identifying the impact of Bilateral Investment Treaties (BITs) on foreign direct investments (FDI) by taking advantage of the random timing of 44 unilateral BIT terminations in India between 2013 and 2019. Using quarterly bilateral FDI data of 138 investor countries, our difference-in-differences (DD) estimates uncover a significant reduction in FDI inflows to India in response to BIT terminations in a range between 14 and 28 percent compared to countries without terminations. Further investigations reveal the sudden break with investor protection for new investments rather than a general negative signal as the major transmission channel. Moreover, we find that similar quality of investor legal institutions relative to India offsets the negative effect of BIT terminations.

The impact of bilateral investment treaties (BITs) on collective labor rights in developing countries

Do bilateral investment treaties (BITs) affect collective labor rights in developing countries? BITs lock in pre-existing low labor standards that are attractive to vertical foreign direct investment, which represents a potential source of labor grievances and protests. Since foreign investors are likely to challenge labor unrest under stringent BITs, host governments are forced to take measures to undermine workers’ ability to engage in collective action in order to reduce the risk of labor unrest. We argue that governments may choose to undercut collective labor practices rather than laws, resulting in a worsening of labor practices and a larger gap between labor laws and practices. Evidence from 119 developing countries between 1985 and 2012 supports our hypotheses. Our results are robust to various measures of BITs, the inclusion of additional control variables, and different model specifications.

Using Legal Institutionalism in the Study of International Investment: Suggestions from the Expansion of Brazilian Multinational Corporations

This paper suggests that studies of FDI flows demand an examination of how multinational firms achieve legal status as corporations instead of how they use global governance and international regulation. Some sources have been investigating the impact of institutions in FDI flows, especially international business (IB) and international economic law (IEL)literatures. However,both of these literatures lack strong findings. Studies in IEL overemphasize the impact of bilateral investment treaties and investment arbitration to explain FDI, and rely on normative legal theories unsuitable to investigate causal links between legal institutions and FDI flows. In contrast, IB studies rely on methodologies suitable to find causality, but overemphasize the flow of FDI from developed to developing countries and face harsh criticism due to reliability problems. I suggest at least three central variables to assess how Brazilian firms have been achieving legal status as multinational corporations almost unexplored to date. These are: the approval of cross-border deals by the Brazilian antitrust authority;the financial support from the Brazilian Development Bank to outward FDI;and the subsidization of FDI in science and technology parks in Brazil.Investigating the impact of such variables onFDI outward Brazil demands a vision of law inspired in social science approaches to empirical research. Legal institutionalism approach inspires such methodology, when suggesting that legal institutions are necessary conditions to constitute markets,and contrasting the role of the rule of law and the private ordering.Therefore, corporations may be relying on the Brazilian rule of law to grant them legal status internationally, which provides them with ability to enforce cross-border agreements unconceivable before the 2000s. In contrast,another hypothesis is thatBrazilian multinational corporations are actually enforcing a private ordering system to keep dominant positions in their businesses and to create international oligopolies and/or monopolies.

What worth is a BIT? Impact of BITs on FDI Inflows into India

Developing countries often consider foreign direct investment (FDI) as an engine to boost economic growth. Therefore they try to promote investment inflow by various means. One approach is to offer investment guarantees to foreign investors using Bilateral Investment Treaties (BITs). Following international best practice, India has signed a number of BITs to stimulate inflow of FDI. Till date, the Government of India has signed BITs with 83 countries. These BITs were largely negotiated on the basis of the Indian Model BIT of 1993. There have been recent moves that point in the direction of India fundamentally altering the text of its BITs with countries, including calling off existing BITs and approving a new model BIT. However, concerns have been raised as to the possible pernicious impact of these changes on the inflow of FDI into India. This paper investigates whether the concern is warranted at all – by asking if BITs significantly impact the inflow of FDI. It is established that BIT is indeed a veritable boost to FDI inflow, and the estimated coefficient remains significant and robust across econometric specifications. Therefore, a note of caution is sounded for the rejigging exercise involving BITs that has been initiated by India.

Heterogeneous effects of bilateral investment treaties

Bilateral Investment Treaties (BITs) are an increasingly used policy instrument to encourage FDI inflows, particularly inflows into developing countries. In this paper we estimate a gravity model of FDI flows from a sample of OECD countries to a broader sample of developing economies, examining the impact of BITs on these flows. BITs are signed between highly heterogeneous country-pairs, with important differences found in terms of the institutional and economic distance between BIT signatories. These differences may help explain the mixed results on the effects of BITs on FDI flows in the existing literature, with our exploration of non-linearities in this relationship suggesting that the effects of BITs are increasing in the difference in GDP and GDP per capita between source and host. BITs appear to have no impact upon FDI flows for country-pairs that are too dissimilar in terms of the strength of their political institutions.

Evaluating the Impact of FTAs on FDI: A Text-Based Approach

The literature on the impact of bilateral investment treaties (BITs) on foreign direct investment (FDI) has had difficulty establishing a robust effect of BITs on FDI flows. This conclusion extends to FDI chapters in free trade agreements (FTAs), which feature the same substantive content as BITs. The lack of an empirically identifiable effect may reflect econometric difficulties, a minimal role of BITs/FTAs in corporate FDI decisions, or the lack of liberalizing content in the treaties. We consider the latter issue by mapping the legal commitments in FTAs onto the OECD’s Foreign Direct Investment Restrictiveness (FDIR) Index, while drawing on the Mode 3 component of the OECD’s Services Trade Restrictiveness Index (STRI) to enable greater granularity of treatment of the measures in FTAs. The modified index, which we label the FDI-RI to distinguish it from the FDIR, has the same broad policy areas and the same weighting scheme as the FDIR but the measures under each horizontal policy area (i.e., policies that apply to FDI in general without distinguishing sectors) that are covered in more detail by the STRI have been disaggregated into measures that correspond to those in the STRI. The FDI-RI thus covers both goods and services on a consistent basis, but with greater detail for goods sectors than available under the FDIR. Importantly, we take into account the impact of FTA measures in improving upon each party’s bindings under the General Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS). In principle, empirically quantified NTBs reflect both applied restrictions and uncertainty. We identify uncertainty with “water” in the bound commitments and construct a composite NTB that reflects applied measures and water. This approach allows a determination of whether and how much FTAs liberalize investment by either reducing applied barriers, decreasing uncertainty, or both. Given measures of tax equivalents for non-tariff measures affecting investment, this approach also allows the calculation of a tax equivalent shock for use in quantitative models. We comment on the impact of FDI liberalization in the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) Agreement using this approach.

Locating the External Source of Enforceability: Alliances, Bilateral Investment Treaties, and Foreign Direct Investment

ObjectiveWe theorize that alliances play a role as an external source of enforceability of bilateral investment treaties (BITs), and they do this by limiting the policy opportunism in foreign direct investment (FDI) host countries. We attempt to demonstrate that being party to common BITs and common alliances substantially raises the accumulation of FDI.MethodsUsing econometric techniques including panel‐corrected standard error, fixed effect, and dynamic pooled models, we analyze panel data on dyadic FDI stock from 1978 to 2003.ResultsWe find that BITs increase FDI stock and that alliances magnify this positive effect of BITs by a substantial margin.ConclusionBeing embedded in alliances strengthens the impact of BITs on FDI. This study contributes to the extant literature on the efficacy of BITs in particular and that on international institutions in general.