This article presents the Investment Facilitation Index (IFI), a dataset measuring the adoption of 117 investment facilitation measures across 86 countries. It analyzes the adoption levels, revealing that lower adoption is found in low-income countries, particularly in Africa and Latin America. The IFI is relevant for WTO discussions and future research on investment policies.
How and to what extent can deep preferential trade agreements (PTAs) support the upgrading of companies from developing countries within global value chains (GVCs)? This question is of increasing importance, as PTAs have become the trade instrument of choice of major trading powers, and their contents regulate policy areas that could potentially interfere with national development strategies. This study focusses on Vietnam, which aims both at moving beyond low value-added production activities in GVCs and increasing economic integration by signing deep PTAs such as the Trans-Pacific Partnership and the EU–Vietnam Free Trade Agreement. Based on empirical evidence from a new business survey, interviews with stakeholders in Vietnam and the analysis of key PTA provisions, we find that deep PTAs can provide new opportunities for Vietnamese firms to upgrade in GVCs – either directly, by providing concrete incentives for upgrading, or indirectly, by addressing some of the identified barriers for upgrading. However, this potential will not materialise automatically and requires both a strategic vision and support programmes initiated by the government and business associations. The findings of this study are relevant not only for Vietnam, but also for a range of other middle-income countries that aim at achieving upgrading in GVCs and may face the decision to sign deep PTAs with major trading powers.
Is China joining this trend towards preferential trade and investment agreements (PTIAs) that go beyond the investment rules found in Chinese bilateral investment treaties (BITs)? In this paper I empirically analyse investment rules incorporated in Chinese PTIAs using China’s BIT practice and the international PTIA practice as benchmarks. The empirical analysis is based on a content analysis of Chinese PTIAs and BITs as well as selected partner country PTIAs. In addition to secondary academic sources, I conducted interviews with Chinese officials as well as relevant stakeholders and negotiators of a number of China’s partner countries to shed light on the policy process driving the developments of China’s PTIA practice. Based on this empirical analysis, I argue that China is pursuing a partially “NAFTA-ized” PTIA policy that is coherent with what China is willing to offer in the context of some of its more recent BITs. I show that innovative treaty language diffuses from its partner country PTIA policies in the process of negotiations towards China’s PTIA policy. Accepting the partner countries’ model texts as the basis for negotiations, innovative treaty language – including references to the international minimum standard, prohibition of performance requirements, transparency rules and environmental provisions – spreads to Chinese PTIAs. However, China stops short of consenting to partner countries’ push towards the inclusion of commitments to liberalise its investment regime. For the Chinese government, PTIAs are not seen as a laboratory to go beyond the narrow focus of its BITs. Quite the opposite, its BIT practice defines the limits of China’s PTIA policy.
With the adoption of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and the entry into force of the Paris Climate Agreement, the international community has inter alia pledged their commitment to economic development that is consistent with environmental sustainability. This paper focuses on the linkage between economic and environmental governance by tracking environmental provisions in preferential trade agreements (PTAs). While the United States and the European Union are frequently seen as innovators of “green” content in PTAs, systematic research on the role of emerging markets in promoting this development is scarce. For this reason, we develop an original, detailed dataset mapping the environmental content in 48 PTAs signed by the emerging markets China, India, Indonesia, Brazil and Mexico. Our findings clearly indicate a trend towards more environmental content in those countries’ PTAs over time. At the same time, the data hint at patterns that suggest that these developments may at least be partly driven by Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) countries. The paper contributes to the literature on the design of PTAs, the linkage between trade and environment, as well as the role of emerging markets in global governance.
Abstract: "The economic and political rise of China has led to considerable controversy regarding potential repercussions for the current global governance architecture. At least two opposing scenarios are conceivable: China's adaptation to the rules and norms system shaped by developed countries or the pursuit of a distinctive policy approach, a possibility that involves the danger of clashing regulatory policies. A recent and increasingly dynamic trend giving substance to the phenomenon of China's rising importance is the growth of outward foreign direct investments (OFDI) by Chinese enterprises. Against this background, the present paper investigates the evolution and change of Chinese international investment policy-making, with a particular focus on bilateral investment treaties (BITs) as the most important legal instrument for the governance of global foreign direct investment (FDI) flows. China has been a committed signatory of BITs since the early 1980s (120 treaties up to 2007). It
Der 1. Fall für das Oldenburger Ermittler-Trio Werner Vollmers, Anke Frerichs und Enno Melchert: Ein skrupelloser Mörder hält Oldenburg in Atem. Innerhalb kürzester Zeit sind ihm bereits drei Menschen zum Opfer gefallen. Wer steckt hinter den hinterhältigen Anschlägen? Das Team um Kommissar Vollmers tappt im Dunkeln. Und was treibt den Täter an? Ein Motiv lässt sich nicht finden, noch weniger ein Verdächtiger. Dann nimmt der Mörder Kontakt zu ihnen auf – und die Ermittler erkennen, dass sie und ganz Oldenburg Teil eines tödlichen Spiels sind. Ein Wettlauf mit der Zeit beginnt …
