Pardee Fellow on Investment Treaties in Latin America

Prof. Kevin Gallagher argues that Bilateral investment treaties (BITs) have shown mixed results in attracting more foreign investment from U.S. companies to Latin America.

Prof. Gallagher suggested that foreign direct investment, while certainly desirable, was neither uniformly beneficial nor equally distributed across Latin America. Currently, 82 percent of foreign direct investment is concentrated in just five Latin American countries: Brazil, Argentina, Chile, Mexico, and Venezuela.

He was speaking on a panel for the Inter-American Dialogue and debated the issue with Ana Palacio, Spain’s former foreign minister who is now secretary general of the International Centre for Settlement of Investment Disputes (ICSID).

More details of the event here.