The Foreign Investment Regulation Review

The main aim of this book is to assess the importance of international rules for foreign direct investment and the major challenges to international harmonization of those rules. Particular attention is paid to the most controversial and contentious issues with the view of appraising the prospects for establishing global rules. The book is divided into three parts; the first part includes papers assessing the role of national and international legislation with further distinction being made between bilateral, regional and multilateral legal frameworks. The second part addresses regulatory issues of technology transfer, labor, environment, subsidies and investment incentives, national security, public services and sovereign wealth funds. The final part looks at the experience of some international fora in addressing these issues and at some theoretical and conceptual problems of rule harmonization. The papers have been written by legal and economic scholars from leading universities. Contents:Introduction (Zdenek Drabek and Petros C Mavroidis)Regulation of Investment in the Trade Régime: From ITO to WTO (Petros C Mavroidis)Domestic, Regional and Multilateral Investment Liberalization (Jorge A Huerta Goldman)Mode 3 of the GATS: A Model for Disciplining Measures Affecting Investment Flows? (Bart De Meester and Dominic Coppens)Labor Standards and Human Rights: Implications for International Trade and Investment (Drusilla K Brown, Alan V Deardorff and Robert M Stern)Interactions Between Subsidies Regulation and Foreign Investment, and the Primacy of the International Trade Regime (Tomer Broude)Environmental Protection (Daniel M Firger and Michael B Gerrard)Technology Transfer: Regulatory Issues and International Investment Agreements (Keith E Maskus)Sovereign Wealth Funds and Political Risk: New Challenges in the Regulation of Foreign Investment (Victoria Barbary and Bernardo Bortolotti)International Tribunals as Agents of Harmonization (Moshe Hirsch)Foreign Acquisitions and National Security: What are Genuine Threats? Whatare Implausible Worries? (Theodore H Moran)Public Services, Investment Liberalization and Protection (Federico Ortino)The EU Approach to Investment (Americo Beviglia Zampetti and Colin Brown)Harmonization of Rules on Foreign Investment (Zdenek Drabek) Readership: Policy makers, negotiators, business councils, NGOs, legal profession (international trade and investment law), economic profession (academics). Keywords:Harmonization;Regulation;Foreign Investment;International EconomicsKey Features:Treatment of “new generation” issues such as human rights or sovereign wealth fundsTreatment of highly controversial issues of harmonization including subsidies, public services and technology transfer or the actual choice whether to harmonize or notAnalysis provided by top international scholarsReviews: “The remarkable collection of papers assembled by Drabek and Mavoridis succeeds both in identifying and explaining in clear terms the most salient questions in the regulation of foreign investment today… The diversity of themes covered in this book make it essential reading for anyone interested in an accessible overview of the latest developments in the regulation of foreign investment.” J. World Trade Review

In recent years, China, the US, and the EU and its Member States have either promulgated new national laws and regulations or drastically revised existing ones to exert more rigorous government control over inward foreign direct investment (FDI). Such government control pertains to the establishment of an ex-ante review regime of FDI in the host state in sectors that are considered as ‘sensitive’ or ‘strategic’, with an aim to mitigate the security-related implications. This book conducts a systematic and up-to-date comparative study of the national security review regimes of China, the US, and the EU, using Germany as an exampling Member State. It answers a central research question of how domestic law should be formulated to adequately protect national security of the host state whilst posing minimum negative impacts to the free flow of cross-border investment. In addition to analyzing the latest development of the national security review regimes in aforementioned jurisdictions and identifying their commonalities and disparities, this book establishes a normative framework regarding the design of a national security review regime in general and proposes specific legislative recommendations to further clarify the law. This book will be of interest to scholars in the field of international and comparative investment law, investors who seek better compliance programs in the host state, and policymakers who aim for high-quality regulation on foreign investment.