This chapter uses the investment facilitation index (IFI) to map the adoption of over 100 investment facilitation measures in more than 140 countries. The study finds a wide variation in investment facilitation frameworks across and within world regions and income groups, with measures related to internal and external cooperation less frequently adopted in low-income countries. Few countries have well-functioning single-window mechanisms, and focal points are either completely missing or lacking many important functions. The study highlights the importance of binding multilateral commitments and support structures for implementing investment facilitation reforms in countries of lower income levels, as foreseen in the nascent Investment Facilitation for Development Agreement. The findings suggest potential for regional and international initiatives through peer-learning and sharing of best practices to improve investment facilitation frameworks worldwide.

Investment facilitation, aiming for improvements in the transparency, efficiency, and predictability of domestic investment frameworks, plays an important role in complementing currently prevailing international measures for attracting external development. Finance and various investment facilitation reform initiatives are under way at multiple levels. However, empirical evidence on currently prevailing levels of adoption of investment facilitation measures and resulting reform and support needs is still scarce.

This chapter investigates whether China assumes the role of a rule-taker, acts as a rule-maker or even breaks with the system governing foreign investment. Given its significant foreign investment flows and economic and political clout, a better understanding of China’s ideas for and potential role in the ongoing reform of global investment governance is highly relevant. An analysis of China’s international investment agreements shows that China acted as a rule-taker by broadly accepting the templates of its treaty partners, while clinging to a number of defensive positions. The most recent and significant international investment agreement negotiated by China, the Comprehensive Agreement on Investment, signed in principle with the EU, seems to be following a template that largely reflects the preferences of the EU. China is also a supporter of the World Trade Organization negotiations on investment facilitation. China’s role in the Investment Facilitation for Development (IFD) Agreement negotiations should be characterized not so much as a thought-leader but as a key promoter of dialogue and negotiations.

The international community has acknowledged that international trade can be an effective means of helping to achieve the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and its 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Traditionally, preferential trade agreements (PTAs) were designed to promote trade flows. PTAs have become more comprehensive and now also cover non-economic policy areas, such as the environment. This chapter examines whether the inclusion of environmental provisions in PTAs changes the observed overall positive contribution that PTAs make to economic outcomes and thereby to the economic objectives of the SDGs. Specifically, we ask whether the inclusion of environmental provisions in PTAs reduces export flows between PTA partner countries. Using a novel data set on environmental provisions in PTAs, we estimate gravity type panel regressions. We find that membership in PTAs including more environmental provisions is associated with less trade among trade partners compared to PTAs that include less or no environmental provisions. This negative effect of environmental provisions is fully driven by the negative effect on South–North trade flows, i.e. exports from developing to high-income countries.

Preferential trade agreements (PTAs) cover a much wider diversity of environmental clauses than World Trade Organization (WTO) agreements. Which PTA environmental clauses could be multilateralized and included in the WTO rulebook? This chapter compares five different scenarios for the potential multilateralization of PTA environmental clauses: (1) The “routine scenario” combines the most frequent clauses, (2) the “consensual scenario” includes the clauses accepted by a high number of WTO members, (3) the “trendy scenario” includes the most popular clauses in recent times, (4) “the power-game scenario” combines the clauses that are jointly supported by the United States and the European Union, and (5) the “appropriate scenario” is a compilation of the clauses typically included in large membership agreements. This chapter compares and contrasts the implications of each scenario and identifies their common ground. Although each scenario represents an ideal type unlikely to materialize, the comparison offers insights into how the multilateral trading system could be developed to improve the integration of environmental concerns.