Rethinking Investment Incentives


Book Description

Governments often use direct subsidies or tax credits to encourage investment and promote economic growth and other development objectives. Properly designed and implemented, these incentives can advance a wide range of policy objectives (increasing employment, promoting sustainability, and reducing inequality). Yet since design and implementation are complicated, incentives have been associated with rent-seeking and wasteful public spending. This collection illustrates the different types and uses of these initiatives worldwide and examines the institutional steps that extend their value. By combining economic analysis with development impacts, regulatory issues, and policy options, these essays show not only how to increase the mobility of capital so that cities, states, nations, and regions can better attract, direct, and retain investments but also how to craft policy and compromise to ensure incentives endure.




Rethinking Securities Law


Book Description

"This book focuses on a very timely and important subject that merit s comprehensive analysis: "rethinking" the securities laws, with particular emphasis on the Securities Act and Securities Exchange Act. The system of securities regulation that prevails today in the United States is one that has been formed through piecemeal federal legislation, Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) in vocation of its administrative authority, and self-regulatory episodic action. As a consequence, the presence of consistent and logical regulation all too often is lacking. In both transactional and litigation settings, with frequency, mandates apply that are erratic and antithetical to sound public policy. Over four decades ago, the American Law Institute (ALI) adopted the ALI Federal Securities Code. The Code has not been enacted by Congress and its prospects are dim. Since that time, no treatise, monograph, or other source comprehensively has focused on this meritorious subject. The objective of this book is to identify the deficiencies that exist under the current regimen, address their failings, provide recommendations for rectifying these deficiencies, and set forth a thorough analysis for remediation in order to prescribe a consistent and sound securities law framework. By undertaking this challenge, the book provides an original and valuable resource for effectuating necessary law reform that should prove beneficial to the integrity of the U.S. capital markets, effective and fair government and private enforcement, and the enhancement of investor protection"--




World Trade and Investment Law Reimagined


Book Description

World trade and investment law is in crisis: new and progressive ideas are needed. Rules that facilitated globalization and supported global economic growth are being challenged. A system of global governance that once seemed secure is now at risk as the United States ignores the rules while developing countries struggle to escape restrictions. Some want to tear global institutions and agreements down while others try desperately to maintain the status quo. Rejecting both options, a group of trade and investment law experts from 10 countries, South and North, have joined hands to propose ideas for a new world trade and investment law that would maintain global growth while distributing costs and benefi ts more fairly. Paying special attention to those who have suffered from trade dislocation and to restrictions that have hampered innovative growth strategies in developing countries, they outline a progressive trade and investment law agenda in World Trade and Investment Law Reimagined.




The Evolving International Investment Regime


Book Description

With the growth of the global economy over the past two decades, foreign direct investment (FDI) laws, at both the national and international levels, have undergone rapid development in order to strengthen the protection standards for foreign investors. In terms of international investment law, a network of international investment agreements has arisen as a way to address FDI growth. FDI backlash, reflective of more restrictive regulation, has also emerged. The Evolving International Investment Regime analyzes the existing challenges to the international investment regime, and addresses these challenges going forward. It also examines the dynamics of the international regime, as well as a broader view of the changing global economic reality both in the United States and in other countries. The content for the book is a compendium of articles by leading thinkers, originating from the International Investment Conference "What's New in International Investment Law and Policy?"




Rethinking Investment Law


Book Description

There is no denying that the rules and enforcement mechanisms of investment law and arbitration reach deep into the regulatory and policy space of host states. Investment tribunals have the ability to second-guess all variety of state measures and, in doing so, have displayed a remarkable lack of restraint. Despite investment law's muscularity, without equal in international law, the prevailing orthodoxy treats investment law as a defensible and just restraint on government and politics. This volume helps to correct the prevailing view. Rethinking Investment Law illustrates how investment law protections for foreign investors constrains states and over-compensates investors. It offers a more balanced vision of how international law can protect all those affected, not just foreign investors. An expert set of contributors explain both the conventional law and its limitations. Their analysis shows that doctrines, now widely entrenched, in orthodox accounts of investment law could have taken, and could still take, a different turn. They offer a more respectful approach to states' roles and responsibilities to enact laws in the public interest. This text will be an illuminating read for students and academics in areas such as investment law and international economic law. It provides cutting-edge analysis for researchers, practitioners, and students seeking to understand and question the usual standards of treatment under investment treaties.




Reconceptualizing International Investment Law from the Global South


Book Description

This book shows how the reform in investment regulation contributes to a broader attempt to transform the international economic order.




Investment Treaties and the Legal Imagination


Book Description

This book brings a new perspective to the subject of international investment law, by tracing the origins of foreign investor rights. It shows how a group of business leaders, bankers, and lawyers in the mid-twentieth century paved the way for our current system of foreign investment relations, and the investor-state dispute settlement mechanism.




Public Interests in International Investment Law


Book Description

Are conflicts between the ‘old capitalists’ and ‘new money’ manifest in today’s economy? Are investment treaties, which have traditionally been used to protect capital exporting states, now beginning to cause unwelcome side effects for them? International investment law has long been held as an economic and political instrument in the regime of international investment, with international investment treaties having been concluded to protect foreign investment and investors for a substantial period of time. However, the emerging new economic powers from the Third World are causing this to change. Taking the unique perspective of environmental protection in host states against states’ obligations to protect and promote foreign investments under the existing international investment treaty practice and dispute settlement practices, this book examines this inescapable conflict. This is the first major work in this field to interpret investment treaty provisions by introducing environmental reflection. It offers proposals for rethinking and reshaping the current pro-investor international investment law through taking up broad environmental exceptions.




Redefining Sovereignty in International Economic Law


Book Description

The concept of state sovereignty is increasingly challenged by a proliferation of international economic instruments and major international economic institutions. States from both the south and north are re-examining and debating the extent to which they should cede control over their economic and social policies to achieve global economic efficiency in an interdependent world. International lawyers are seriously rethinking the subject of state sovereignty, in relation to the operation of the main international economic institutions, namely the WTO, the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF). The contributions in this volume, bringing together leading scholars from the developed and developing worlds, take up the challenge of debating the meaning of sovereignty and the impact of international economic law on state sovereignty. The first part looks at the issues from the perspectives of general international law, international economic law and legal theory. Part two discusses the impact of trade liberalisation on the sovereignty of both industrialised and developing states and Part three concentrates on the challenge to state sovereignty created by the proliferation of investment treaties and the significant recent growth of investment treaty based arbitration cases. Part four focuses on the domestic and international effects of international financial intermediaries and markets. Part five explores the tensions and intersections between the international regulation of trade and investment, international human rights and state sovereignty




The Impact of Investment Treaty Law on Host States


Book Description

Traditionally, international investment law was conceptualised as a set of norms aiming to ensure good governance for foreign investors, in exchange for their capital and know-how. However, the more recent narratives postulate that investment treaties and investor–state arbitration can lead to better governance not just for foreign investors but also for host state communities. Investment treaty law can arguably foster good governance by holding host governments liable for a failure to ensure transparency, stability, predictability and consistency in their dealings with foreign investors. The recent proliferation of such narratives in investment treaty practice, arbitral awards and academic literature raises questions as to their juridical, conceptual and empirical underpinnings. What has propelled good governance from a set of normative ideals to enforceable treaty standards? Does international investment law possess the necessary characteristics to inspire changes at the national level? How do host states respond to investment treaty law? The overarching objective of this monograph is to unpack existing assumptions concerning the effects of international investment law on host states. By combining doctrinal, empirical, comparative analysis and unveiling the emerging 'nationally felt' responses to international investment norms, the book aims to facilitate a more informed understanding of the present contours and the nature of the interplay between international investment norms and national realities.