Books

FDI Perspectives: Issues in International Investment, 2nd Edition, edited by Karl P. Sauvant and Jennifer Reimer (November 2012)

This second edition provides an overview of important contemporary issues relating to foreign direct investment (FDI) and multinational enterprises for all those who are interested in this subject, but are not always in a position to follow diverse perspectives and what is being written in the various corners of this field. The contributions are grouped under the following headings: attracting FDI and its impact; the rise of emerging market investors; national policies; sustainable international investment; and international investment treaties and arbitration. The volume brings together all Perspectives published since the inception of this series.

The ebook volume is available for download here. 中文版

For Kindle edition click here.

Sovereign Investment: Concerns and Policy Reactions, edited by Karl P. Sauvant, Lisa E. Sachs, and Wouter P.F. Schmit Jongbloed (Oxford University Press, 2012).

Sovereign Investment: Concerns and Policy Reactions provides the first major holistic examination and interdisciplinary analysis of sovereign wealth funds. These funds currently hold five trillion dollars' worth of investments, almost twice the amount in all the hedge funds worldwide, and could hold much more by 2015. In addition, state-owned enterprises – another form of sovereign investment – play an important role in the flows and stocks of foreign direct investment.

The rapid rise of sovereign wealth funds and state-owned enterprises remains relatively unregulated, but the International Monetary Fund has helped to establish voluntary rules to introduce transparency and uniformity as regards sovereign wealth funds, and a number of countries have strengthened their regulatory frameworks regarding sovereign investment in general. What rules and procedures should govern sovereign investment? What bodies should enforce them? Do the current rules answer the national security concerns of host countries? Focusing on the foreign direct investment dimension of this issue, the editors of this volume, Karl P. Sauvant, Lisa E. Sachs, and Wouter P.F. Schmit Jongbloed, address these questions in a collection of essays by leading authorities from the IMF, OECD, academic institutions, law firms, multinational enterprises, and think tanks.

View the flyer for ordering information or order on Amazon.com.

View the front matter as well as Chapter 1 and Chapter 12 for this volume.

Chinese Outward Investment: An Emerging Policy Framework, edited by Lise Johnson, Nathalie Bernasconi-Osterwalder and Jianping Zhang (International Institute for Sustainable Development and Institute for International Economic Research, 2012).

The rapid rise and increasingly significant size of Chinese outward investment is attracting attention and provoking debate not only from a purely economic but also a sustainable development perspective. While the legal and policy frameworks in the recipient country are key to achieving development that is sustainable from the inflowing capital, the roles of international frameworks, as well as China’s domestic legal and policy framework governing its outward investment, are also significant.

Yet despite their importance, Chinese primary materials relating to its outward investment are generally difficult to find and, if available, scattered among various sources. Lise Johnson, along with Nathalie Bernasconi-Osterwalder and Jianping Zhang, have therefore compiled an English-language booklet of over 80 primary texts relevant to Chinese policy on Chinese outward investment to facilitate access to these materials.

The ebook volume is available for download here.

Special Issue of Transnational Corporations, Vol. 20, No. 1, April 2011, guest editors, Karl P. Sauvant and Miles Killingsworth (New York and Geneva: United Nations Conference on Trade and Development, 2011).

View the front matter and a chapter co-authored by Karl P. Sauvant, "FDI, the Global Crisis and Sustainable Recovery".

The Evolving International Investment Regime: Expectations, Realities, Options; edited by José E. Alvarez and Karl P. Sauvant with Kamil Gérard Ahmed and Gabriela P. Vizcaíno (New York: Oxford University Press, 2011).

The Evolving International Investment Regime: Expectations, Realities, Options The transboundary flow of capital directed at establishing businesses is the engine of the world economy. Approximately 3000 bilateral and regional investment protection treaties worldwide govern this driver of economic globalization. As might be expected, the international investment regime now competes with the World Trade Organization for global praise and criticism. This volume looks at how these treaties and investor-state arbitrations that apply them accommodate the different expectations of various stockholders, including governments, foreign investors and civil society. The volume’s diverse authors focus especially on the views of developing countries and international civil society. They address the extent to which the regime is satisfying the expectations of those who originally drafted the treaties as well as the states now at the losing end of investor-state awards. They review critiques of the regime that help explain sovereign and political backlash, identify avenues for accommodating various interests, and make specific proposals to address concrete challenges. The volume should interest academics, practitioners, negotiators of international investment agreements, and others who want to know more about the rules that govern foreign direct investment, the activities of multinational enterprises, and those who seek to advance sustainable economic development through both.

View the front matter and introduction for this volume.

The Yearbook on International Investment Law and Policy (New York: Oxford University Press).

Today, international investment law consists of a network of multifaceted, multilayered international treaties that, in one way or another, involve virtually every country of the world. The evolution of this network continues, raising a host of issues regarding international investment law and policy, especially in the area of international investment disputes.

The Investment Yearbook monitors current developments in international investment law and policy, focusing (in Part One) on trends in foreign direct investment (FDI), international investment agreements, and investment disputes, with a special look at developments in the oil and gas sector. Part Two, then, looks at central issues in the contemporary discussions on international investment law and policy. With contributions by leading experts in the field, this title provides timely, authoritative information on FDI that can be used by a wide audience, including practitioners, academics, researchers, and policy makers.

For more on the Investment Yearbook, including the Advisory Board, Editorial Committee, and select material from the volumes, click here.

Reports of Overseas Private Investment Corporation Determinations, edited by Mark Kantor, Michael D. Nolan, and Karl P. Sauvant (New York: Oxford University Press, 2011).

The only publication to include the complete collection of Overseas Private Investment Corporation (OPIC) determinations including historical decisions which have not yet been published.

This comprehensive two-volume work is a collection of determinations from OPIC, the US governmental political risk insurance provider, in the form of its Memoranda of Determinations from 1966 to 2010. This reference work is the first to make the underlying primary material available to the investment law, political risk and academic communities. The authors have made the claims determinations more accessible with the inclusion of headnote summaries for all determinations. The determinations reflect the decisions of OPIC under US and international law and therefore have a significant impact on its future claims determinations. They reveal what types of claims have been honored for expropriation, political violence or convertibility/ transferability restrictions. Users of political risk insurance worldwide will find this collection invaluable in understanding what events are and are not in fact covered, and deciding whether to obtain insurance coverage. These OPIC determinations will also contribute to the development of arbitral jurisprudence regarding government actions that are alleged to be in violation of investment protections found in investment treaties and investment law. They are additionally of interest in the context of the presentation and determination of future OPIC claims and decision making by other political risk insurance providers.

View the front matter (including table of contents, introduction and overviews) for these volumes.

View the flyer for the UK version and the US version.

More information (including ordering information) is available on the OUP website or on Amazon.

MNEs from Emerging Markets: New Players in the World FDI Market, edited by Karl P. Sauvant, Vishwas P. Govitrikar and Ken Davies (January 2011)

The rise of FDI from emerging markets has become a focus of attention since the turn of the century. Over the past few years, firms from these markets have become major investors abroad, complementing their home countries‘ traditional role as recipients of FDI. To help understand this remarkable phenomenon, a unique collaborative effort that brings together researchers on FDI from leading institutions in emerging markets has so far produced annual reports on over 200 MNEs in 11 countries. The reports give a basic statistical picture of the activities of the leading outward investors from emerging markets, including how important foreign activities are in each firm‘s total activity and the global spread of each enterprise. The reports also contain brief analyses of the trend of outward investment by these enterprises, including their responses to the financial and economic crisis of 2008-2009.

The ebook volume is available for download here.

Inward and Outward FDI Country Profiles, edited by Karl P. Sauvant, Thomas Jost, Ken Davies, and Ana-Maria Poveda-Garces (January 2011)

This compilation contains a series of standardized country profiles of inward and outward foreign direct investment (FDI), peer-reviewed by a global network of experts. The publication is intended to contribute to the analysis of trends in foreign direct investment and policy issues related to them. The reports, which cover inward and outward FDI for 22 countries (13 developed economies and 9 emerging markets), include statistics on FDI stocks and flows, output and employment of foreign affiliates, and sectoral and geographical FDI distributions. The reports also list principal foreign affiliates (for inward FDI), principal multinational enterprises (for outward FDI), together with lists of recent major M&As and greenfield investments. The standardized template used to produce the reports is also included. This volume is designed to become a reference tool for anyone interested in foreign direct investment.

The ebook volume is available for download here. 中文版

FDI Perspectives: Issues in International Investment, edited by Karl P. Sauvant, Lisa Sachs, Ken Davies, Ruben Zandvliet (January 2011)

The 30 chapters in this volume, written by diverse experts on international investment, cover a wide range of issues in this field. Their purpose is to inform readers in a concise manner about some of the important issues and trends in the contemporary debate on FDI and to promote a wide-ranging discussion about the policy implications of major trends and events.

The ebook volume is available for download here.

The Rise of Indian Multinationals, edited by Karl P. Sauvant and Jaya Prakash Pradhan, with Ayesha Chatterjee and Brian Harley (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010).

Hitherto inward-looking, Indian firms have evolved into global players over the past decade. The effects of their expanding overseas greenfield investments and acquisitions are being felt across all regions and sectors of the global market, from knowledge-based industries such as information technology, pharmaceuticals, chemicals, and automobiles to the oil and natural gas industries. Yet little is known about these emerging multinationals, their characteristics and competitive strategies, or the implications of their emergence for host countries, both developed and developing.

The studies in this volume provide new perspectives on the rise of Indian multinationals, capturing the evolutionary dimensions of their emergence and presenting analyses of their outward foreign direct investments. The Vale Columbia Center on Sustainable International Investment and the Institute for Studies in Industrial Development have brought together leading experts to shed light on this major development. The contributors provide current perspectives from different countries and disciplines such as economics, political science, management, and policy practice to illuminate the characteristics and strategies of emerging Indian multinationals and their impact on world markets.

View the front matter, Chapter 1 as well as the flyer for this volume.

Foreign Direct Investment from Emerging Markets: The Challenges Ahead, edited by Karl P. Sauvant and Geraldine McAllister, with Wolfgang A. Maschek (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010).

Foreign direct investment from emerging markets is an increasingly important phenomenon; firms from developed countries alone no longer undertake this activity. Foreign Direct Investments from Emerging Markets provides the latest scholarship on this subject from eminent contributors from around the world. This volume demonstrates the importance of rigorous analysis to understand the dilemmas, the controversies, the disputes, and the policy issues that need to be considered in connection with this new phenomenon. In the wake of the financial crisis, it is more critical than ever for those involved in FDI research and policy to understand these issues.

View the table of contents, foreword and preface as well as Chapter 1 for this volume.

View the flyer for ordering information or order on Amazon.

Handbook for Promoting Foreign Direct Investment in Medium-size, Low-Budget Cities in Emerging Markets

In December 2009, the Vale Columbia Center on Sustainable International Investment and the Millennium Cities Initiative (MCI) released the Handbook for Promoting Foreign Direct Investment in Medium-size, Low-Budget Cities in Emerging Markets. With foreign direct investment (FDI) flows declining worldwide by an estimated 40-50% this year (following a decline of over 10% in 2008), investment promotion has become more important than ever: in a highly competitive world FDI market, promotion can make all the difference.

Investment promotion is particularly important for cities other than capital cities, as investors in manufacturing and services often locate primarily in a country’s capital city. Hence, commercially viable investment opportunities need to be identified at the city level and in surrounding areas and brought to the attention of investors elsewhere in the country, in the region and internationally – and investors need to be assisted when they establish themselves.

At the same time, effective investment promotion generally requires the development of an FDI promotion strategy, including a detailed sector competitiveness analysis that involves identifying key target markets and benchmarking against competitors, an exercise that may require in-depth groundwork and expertise. Therefore, the Handbook seeks to assist medium-size, low-budget cities in creating a capacity for investment promotion. It is a practical "how to" guide for city investment promotion based on the experience of different investment promotion agencies and experts from around the globe.

The Handbook is also available in Spanish and Chinese.

The Effect of Treaties on Foreign Direct Investment: Bilateral Investment Treaties, Double Taxation Treaties and Investment Flows, edited by Karl P. Sauvant and Lisa E Sachs (New York: Oxford University Press, 2009).

In recent years, the treaties and strategies promoting foreign direct investment (FDI) have changed dramatically. In particular, countries have liberalized their FDI laws and have entered into bilateral investment treaties (BITs) and double taxation treaties (DTTs) to attract such investment. The basic purpose of these treaties is to signal to investors that investments will be legally protected under international law in case of political turmoil and to mitigate the possibility of double taxation of foreign entities. But the actual effect of BITs and DTTs on the flows of foreign direct investment has been debated. The Effect of Treaties on Foreign Direct Investment is a comprehensive assessment of the performance of these treaties in this respect, and presents the most recent literature on BITs
and DTTs and their impact on foreign investment flows.

View the Table of Contents.

Download the flyer [.pdf] for ordering information or order on Amazon.com.

Investing in the United States: Is the U.S. Ready for FDI From China?, edited by Karl P. Sauvant (Cheltenham: Edward Elgar, 2010)

The Vale Columbia Center partnered with the U.S. Chinese Services Group of Deloitte LLP to assess the readiness of the United States for foreign direct investment (FDI), and especially M&As, from China. This volume contains the results of the year-long study. It is also of great interest to investors from other countries seeking to expand into the United States as they are confronted with the new regulatory environment for such investment.

Here are table of contents and Chapter 1.

View the flyer for ordering information.

A few of the chapters have also been published in the following booklets, co-edited with Deloitte LLP:

Is the U.S. Ready for FDI from China? Lessons from Japan's Experience in the 1980s, by Curtis Milhaupt.
The U.S. environment for inbound FDI from China- and the reactions to it- today exhibit striking parallels with the environment for Japanese FDI in the 1980s. This booklet examines the experience of Japanese interests in the United States and seeks to draw lessons for China. Download (English) | (Chinese)

The U.S Regulatory and Institutional Framework for FDI , by David Fagan.
This booklet addresses the regulatory and institutional framework governing FDI in the United States. As the regulatory framework varies greatly depending on the nature of the transaction, the booklet provides a thorough overview of the regulatory environment for mergers and acquistions as well as greenfield investments. It identifies areas of heightened risks for Chinese investors and discusses ways to enhance the likelihood of regulatory approval and minimize potential political risk. Download (English) | (Chinese)

International Investment Law Protections, by Mark Kantor.
China and the U.S. have commenced serious discussion of a possible bilateral investment treaty. The third booklet in the series looks at the protections afforded by investment treaties to Chinese investors in the United States, including the use of investor-State arbitration to enforce substantive rights such as the international minimum standard of treatment (including fair & equitable treatment), the obligation to provide full compensation for direct or indirect expropriations, and the anti-discrimination principles of “Most Favored Nation” and “National Treatment.” The booklet also covers limits on those international law protections. Coming Soon!

Appeals Mechanism in International Investment Disputes, edited by Karl P. Sauvant with Michael Chiswick-Patterson (New York: Oxford University Press, 2008).

Appeals Mechanism in International Investment Disputes brings together significant contributions from leading voices in academia, the legal profession, and government on the increasingly important topic of international investment and the legal system in which it operates. It compiles, compares and contrasts the analysis and arguments of leading scholars, practitioners and government officials on the future of the international investment law regime. The volume pays particular attention to the question of an appellate body for international investment disputes.

View the table of contents and the publication flyer.

Visit the Oxford University Press website to purchase the volume.

The Rise of Transnational Corporations from Emerging Markets: Threat or Opportunity?, edited by Karl P. Sauvant with Kristin Mendoza and Irmak Ince (Cheltenham: Edward Elgar, 2008)

The Rise of Transnational Corporations from Emerging Markets: Threat or Opportunity? deals with the range of issues raised by the rise of transnational corporations from emerging markets. This insightful book shows that foreign direct investment from emerging markets has grown from negligible amounts in the early 1980s to $300 billion in 2007, with the stock of investment now being well over $1 trillion. This reflects the rise of firms from these economies to become important players in the world FDI market.

The contributors to this book comprehensively analyze the rise of emerging market TNCs, the salient features of the transnational activities of these firms, the relationship of outward FDI to the competitiveness of the firms involved, their impact on host and home countries and implications for the international law and policy regime.

The subject of this study is both topical and important and poses a number of challenges that will require considerable policy attention in the future. It will appeal to academics interested in FDI as well as emerging markets.

View the publication flyer with table of contents [download .pdf], and the flyer for the paperback edition, released in 2009. [download .pdf]

Visit the Edward Elgar Publishing website to purchase the volume.

World Investment Prospects to 2011: Foreign Direct Investment and the Challenge of Political Risk

The Columbia Program on International Investment, now the Vale Columbia Center on Sustainable International Investment, partnered with the Economist Intelligence Unit, a member of The Economist Group, to publish World Investment Prospects to 2011: Foreign Direct Investment and the Challenge of Political Risk.The report contains the first authoritative data on FDI flows for 2006 and forecasts flows until 2011, with 2007 set for a new record. It also contains the results of a survey of over 600 corporate executives concerning their investment intentions for the next five years. World Investment Prospects to 2011 pays special attention to the rise of FDI protectionism and regulatory risk. The report was released on Sept. 5, 2007. A webcast of the publication press conference and a podcast interview are now available for download .

In the report, Jeffrey D. Sachs, Director of The Earth Institute at Columbia University, examines emerging market political risk in the energy sector and how to address it. Laza Kekic, Director, Country Forecasting Services, Economist Intelligence Unit, analyzes key FDI trends to 2011. Karl P. Sauvant, Executive Director, Columbia Program on International Investment, explores the potential impact of FDI protectionism on global FDI flows. Matthew Shinkman of the Economist Intelligence Unit presents and analyzes the detailed results of the MNE survey.

Download pdf of the World Investment Prospects to 2011 report.

View press conference webcast for World Investment Prospects to 2011 (requires RealPlayer)

Podcast: Karl P. Sauvant discusses the World Investment Prospects to 2011: Foreign Direct Investment and the Challenge of Political Risk with James Reese on Radio Economics.

View our global and regional press releases:

Global Press Release

Global Press Release (Spanish)

Global Press Release (French)

Asia Press Release

Europe & Eurasia Press Release

Latin America Press Release

Latin America Press Release (Spanish)

Middle East & North Africa Press Release

Sub-Saharan Africa Press Release

On September 5, 2006, the Columbia Program on International Investment and the Economist Intelligence Unit released World Investment Prospects to 2010: Boom or Backlash? – a joint publication from the World Investment Prospects annual series. This 2006 publication contains FDI-flow forecasts at the global and regional levels for 2006-2010, as well as for 82 countries. It also contains FDI data, business environment rankings and market profiles; an analysis of FDI trends and of important topical issues; and a data annex.

Download the Special Edition of the 2006 report (those parts of the report that contain an analysis of future and past investment flows and key issues surrounding them).

The full report is available for purchase at: www.store.eiu.com.

Podcast: Karl P. Sauvant discusses the World Investment Prospects to 2010: Boom or Backlash? with James Reese on Radio Economics.