The influence of interest: Real US interest rates and bilateral investment treaties

Bilateral Investment Treaties (BITs) present developing countries with a trade-off. BITs plausibly increase access to international capital in the form of foreign direct investment (FDI), but at the cost of substantially curtailing a government’s policy autonomy. Nearly 3000 BITs have been entered into, suggesting that many countries have found this trade-off acceptable. But governments’ enthusiasm for signing and ratifying BITs has varied considerably across countries and across time. Why are BITs more popular in some places and times than others? We argue that capital scarcity is an important driver of BIT signings: The trade-off inherent in BITs becomes more attractive to governments as the need to secure access to international capital increases. More specifically, we argue that the coincidence of high US interest rates and net external financial liabilities heightens governments’ incentives to secure access to foreign capital, and therefore results in BIT signings. Empirical evidence is consistent with our theory.     

The long road home: migratory experience and the construction of the self

Using autobiographical narratives, this article explores the experience and role of childhood immigration in the ongoing construction of self-identity. A variety of border-crossings are considered in the child's journey from cultural marginalization to acculturation into American society. Continuing feelings of displacement and loss into adulthood-common tropes in adult narratives-are then examined, as are immigrants' efforts to creatively address aspects of a hybrid identity, e.g., via "return trips" to the homeland or through the deployment of a double vision in the interest of social and political inclusiveness.     

Entwicklungslinien der Politischen Theorie in Deutschland seit 1945

In this article we map out the development of German political theory since 1945 and locate it within the international context. For this purpose we track concepts which were central in shaping the scholarly controversies within the field. We distinguish between organizational concepts (democracy, state, power, system, institution), normative ideas (justice, common welfare, recognition) and new themes (gender, discourse, globalization). The resulting picture of the development of political theory replaces the common idea of three phases with a decisive break at the beginning of the 1980s.     

Why Should I Believe You? The Costs and Consequences of Bilateral Investment Treaties

Bilateral Investment Treaties (BITs) are the primary legal mechanism protecting foreign direct investment (FDI) around the world. BITs are thought to encourage FDI by establishing a broad set of investor's rights and by allowing investors to sue a host state in an international tribunal if these rights are violated. Perhaps surprisingly, the empirical literature connecting BITs to FDI flows has produced conflicting results. Some papers have found that BITs attract FDI, while others have found no relationship or even that BITs repel FDI. I suggest in this paper that these results stem from statistical models that do not fully capture the causal mechanisms that link BITs to FDI. Extant literature has often suggested that BITs may encourage investment from both protected and unprotected investors, yet the literature has not allowed for a full evaluation of this claim. This paper explores the theoretical underpinnings and empirical implications of an institution that works in these direct and indirect ways, and offers a statistical test that is capable of distinguishing between the two. The results indicate that: (1) BITs attract significant amounts of investment; (2) BITs attract this investment from protected and unprotected investors; and (3) these results are obscured by endogeneity unless corrected for in the statistical model.