The impact of international investment agreements on foreign direct investment : the Swiss experience

Abstract

This paper examines the impact of bilateral investment treaties (BITs) on Swiss foreign direct investment (FDI) flows. It also investigates the role of BITs as protective tools of Swiss investment. This paper is based on secondary data analysis; data is obtained from various official entities. This study uses statistical and machine learning techniques in order to detect meaningful relationships between BITs and FDI flows. Our findings suggest that the implementation of BITs have an insignificant impact on the increase of Swiss FDI flows. However, from our examination, two interesting findings have emerged suggesting that the completion of BITs may have an impact on the increase of political stability and role of law of host countries.