TY - JOUR
T1 - What states want
T2 - Estimating ideal points from international investment treaty content
AU - Montal, Florencia
AU - Potz-Nielsen, Carly
AU - Sumner, Jane Lawrence
N1 - Publisher Copyright:
© The Author(s) 2020.
PY - 2020/11
Y1 - 2020/11
N2 - When negotiating investment treaties, states balance two goals: providing strong protections for investors (investor protection), which is thought to attract foreign direct investment, and maintaining the ability to regulate their economies (regulatory autonomy). In this article we argue that treaty content can tell us about the latent preferences that states have over the level of investor protection enshrined in BITs. We use an item response theory (IRT) model and a dataset of 1,144 treaties to estimate latent preferences on this scale for signatory countries. Our measure is of use to scholars interested in studying bilateral investment treaties, international law, and foreign direct investment, and our model is of use to anyone aiming to estimate latent preferences from jointly produced manifestations.
AB - When negotiating investment treaties, states balance two goals: providing strong protections for investors (investor protection), which is thought to attract foreign direct investment, and maintaining the ability to regulate their economies (regulatory autonomy). In this article we argue that treaty content can tell us about the latent preferences that states have over the level of investor protection enshrined in BITs. We use an item response theory (IRT) model and a dataset of 1,144 treaties to estimate latent preferences on this scale for signatory countries. Our measure is of use to scholars interested in studying bilateral investment treaties, international law, and foreign direct investment, and our model is of use to anyone aiming to estimate latent preferences from jointly produced manifestations.
KW - Bayesian item response theory model
KW - bilateral investment treaties
KW - latent variable estimation
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85094644857&partnerID=8YFLogxK
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U2 - 10.1177/0022343320959130
DO - 10.1177/0022343320959130
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:85094644857
SN - 0022-3433
VL - 57
SP - 679
EP - 691
JO - Journal of Peace Research
JF - Journal of Peace Research
IS - 6
ER -