Summary -Foreign investors are often skeptical toward the quality of the domestic institutions and the enforceability of the law in developing countries. Bilateral Investment Treaties (BITs) guarantee certain standards of treatment that can be enforced via binding investor-to-state dispute settlement outside the domestic juridical system. Developing countries accept restrictions on their sovereignty in the hope that the protection from political and other risks leads to an increase in foreign direct investment (FDI), which is also the stated purpose of BITs. We provide the first rigorous quantitative evidence that a higher number of BITs raises the FDI that flows to a developing country. This result is very robust to changes in model specification, estimation technique and sample size. There is also some limited evidence that BITs might function as substitutes for good domestic institutional quality, but this result is not robust to different specifications of institutional quality.

Summary -Foreign investors are often skeptical toward the quality of the domestic institutions and the enforceability of the law in developing countries. Bilateral Investment Treaties (BITs) guarantee certain standards of treatment that can be enforced via binding investor-to-state dispute settlement outside the domestic juridical system. Developing countries accept restrictions on their sovereignty in the hope that the protection from political and other risks leads to an increase in foreign direct investment (FDI), which is also the stated purpose of BITs. We provide the first rigorous quantitative evidence that a higher number of BITs raises the FDI that flows to a developing country. This result is very robust to changes in model specification, estimation technique and sample size. There is also some limited evidence that BITs might function as substitutes for good domestic institutional quality, but this result is not robust to different specifications of institutional quality.

Summary -Foreign investors are often skeptical toward the quality of the domestic institutions and the enforceability of the law in developing countries. Bilateral Investment Treaties (BITs) guarantee certain standards of treatment that can be enforced via binding investor-to-state dispute settlement outside the domestic juridical system. Developing countries accept restrictions on their sovereignty in the hope that the protection from political and other risks leads to an increase in foreign direct investment (FDI), which is also the stated purpose of BITs. We provide the first rigorous quantitative evidence that a higher number of BITs raises the FDI that flows to a developing country. This result is very robust to changes in model specification, estimation technique and sample size. There is also some limited evidence that BITs might function as substitutes for good domestic institutional quality, but this result is not robust to different specifications of institutional quality.

This paper argues that policing be understood as a creative social force that reproduces important dimensions of earlier iterations of the colour line. The paper advances this argument by integrating findings from two distinct research projects: the first on the household financial losses that follow arrest by immigration officials in Tucson, AZ; and the second focusing on the everyday costs of policing and carceral supervision absorbed by residents of Philadelphia, PA. Together, data from these sites illuminate how exposure to policing exhausts emotional and material resources from expansive family and community networks of care and support. To theorise the connection between financial dispossession and the dispossession of future opportunity, we draw on a heuristic reading of the “thin blue line” symbol. We conclude by suggesting a need for closer attention to how contemporary state interventions drive patterns of dispossession and vulnerability that accumulate across various scales, sites, rhythms, and collectivities.