Nuremberg Research Seminar in Economics on 25 June 2025, Zoom (!!16:45!!)
You are invited to join the weekly Nuremberg Research Seminar in Economics on 25 June 2025 at 16:45 pm (!!). The seminar will be held via Zoom. Emily Blanchard (Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth) will be talking about “Justice for Sale: Explaining the Rise in Investor-State Dispute Settlement”.
More information can be found here:
We build a novel database linking the universe of investor-state dispute settlement (ISDS) cases with detailed financial, ownership, and operating data for the foreign investors initiating these disputes from 2000 to 2020. We document a sharp and sustained increase in the number of ISDS cases that is not explained by changes in the scope of international investment treaties or the expansion of multinational firms’ global operations. This increase corresponds instead to a shift in the composition of ISDS claimants, with a marked rise in the share of smaller firms initiating cases after the mid-2000s. Guided by theory and augmented with data on litigation technology choices, we find evidence that the emergence of third-party funding (TPF) explains a significant portion of this rise. We also find that TPF is associated with a higher likelihood of claimant success, raising normative questions about its broader role in international economic law.