Foreign Investment, Development and Governance. What international investment law can learn from the empirical literature on investment

Academic and policy debates about investment treaties are premised on assumptions about the benefits of foreign investment. There is a rich and sophisticated body of empirical literature that examines whether these assumptions are valid. A few notable exceptions aside, scholarship on investment treaties does not engage deeply with this literature. The central argument of this article is that scholars and policy-makers working on investment treaties can benefit from a deeper engagement with the wider empirical literature on the effects of investment. One central insight from the empirical literature is that increased foreign investment is not necessarily beneficial from a host state perspective. This article explores the implications of this insight for research on and debates about investment treaties. Other, more specific, insights from the empirical literature are also relevant to debates about the interpretation and reform of investment treaties.