Self-interested and biased arbitrators are often held responsible for the legitimacy crisis of investor-state dispute settlement (ISDS). Based on UNCTAD's database on ISDS since the late 1990s, we find no compelling evidence that arbitrators are systematically biased. Many disputes are handled...

The authors analyze empirically whether the impact of BITs and RTAs on bilateral FDI flows depends on the inclusion of two legal innovations: investor-state dispute settlement (ISDS) and pre-establishment national treatment (NT) provisions. Indeed, they find strong evidence that liberal NT...

The concentration of FDI in India has increased since the reform program in the early 1990s as an ever larger number of districts do not attract any projects and the intensive margin of concentration has increased. These trends hold for essentially all types and sources of FDI, while the average...

Based on a new global index on infrastructure, this Perspective shows that infrastructure is crucially important for developing countries' attractiveness to FDI inflows. The identification of critical gaps in infrastructure strengthens the bargaining position of policymakers in these countries...

Democratic governments tie their hands particularly tightly by concluding more and stricter international investment agreements than autocratic governments, even though the domestic institutional framework in democracies alone offers protection for foreign investors. This Perspective argues that...