Mapping the Universe of International Investment Agreements

Journal of International Economic Law, Vol. 19, No. 3, 2016, pp. 561-588.

35 Pages Posted: 29 Jun 2016 Last revised: 21 Jun 2017

See all articles by Wolfgang Alschner

Wolfgang Alschner

University of Ottawa - Common Law Section

Dmitriy Skougarevskiy

European University at St. Petersburg

Date Written: June 28, 2016

Abstract

Traditional means of content analysis are ill-equipped to deal with the vast universe of international investment agreements (IIAs). In this article, we propose a novel approach to efficiently investigate over 2,100 IIAs and their 24,000 articles in unprecedented detail by treating treaty text as data. Our suggested metric yields new and surprising insights about the IIA universe at four different levels. First, at the global level, we use our approach to investigate the effect of asymmetries on negotiation outcomes finding that developed countries tend to be the IIA system’s rule-makers, while developing countries tend to be its rule-takers. Second, on the country-level, our method can trace consistency and legal innovation in national treaty networks uncovering hitherto unknown investment policy changes such as the Finnish shift to a pre-establishment template in 1999. Third, on the inter-treaty level, our metric can detect investment policy diffusion highlighting that Israel, for instance, copied its BIT language from British investment agreements. Finally, on the individual treaty-level, our approach enables us to assess the novelty of newly concluded agreements, like the Trans-Pacific Partnership, by relating them to prior practice. Our metric thus provides researchers, practitioners and policy-makers with a powerful novel tool to analyze the IIA universe.

Keywords: International Investment Agreements, Bilateral Investment Treaties, Text as Data, Computational Analysis of Law

Suggested Citation

Alschner, Wolfgang and Skougarevskiy, Dmitriy, Mapping the Universe of International Investment Agreements (June 28, 2016). Journal of International Economic Law, Vol. 19, No. 3, 2016, pp. 561-588., Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=2801608 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.2801608

Wolfgang Alschner (Contact Author)

University of Ottawa - Common Law Section ( email )

57 Louis Pasteur Street
Ottawa, K1N 6N5
Canada

Dmitriy Skougarevskiy

European University at St. Petersburg ( email )

6/1A Gagarinskaya Street
St. Petersburg, 191187
Russia

HOME PAGE: http://eusp.org

Do you have negative results from your research you’d like to share?

Paper statistics

Downloads
718
Abstract Views
3,438
Rank
65,720
PlumX Metrics