We Need a Bold Financial Response to Coronavirus

By Myriam Vander Stichele | Guest Blog | March 20, 2020

Now that the financial markets are in turmoil, authorities are providing ever more robust measures and extra capital. But the panic in the financial markets is very much of its own making. The financial industry succeeded for years in fiercely opposing intervention and regulation that would have prevented the current financial distress. Authorities now have to face the resulting weak regulatory framework and restrict the viral excesses of the financial industry’s behavior. Rather than fleeing and waiting on the…

Read More |

Why Did Argentina Impose Capital Controls?

By Prachi Agarwal | Guest Blog | September 23, 2019

On September 1, 2019, Argentine President Mauricio Macri imposed capital controls on the foreign exchange market to help control the depreciating peso and counter the rapid decline in foreign exchange reserves. This move comes at a time when the country is gearing up for its elections in October 2019. Is this an attempt to boost the economy that is already struggling with recessionary tendencies and is it, therefore, an attempt by President Macri to improve his public image?

The capital…

Read More |

Investment Facilitation for Sustainable Development: Getting it Right for Developing Countries

By Howard Mann and Martin Dietrich Brauch | Guest Blog | August 30, 2019

Over the past 18 months, multiple Columbia FDI Perspectives have argued for the WTO to initiate negotiations on investment facilitation. A common foundation has been the view that trade and investment are just two sides of the same coin; hence drafting an investment-facilitation agreement is just a matter of replicating its close sibling on trade facilitation. This simplistic view ignores many realities. Trade happens in an instant and generally implicates a limited number of actors and domestic laws….

Read More |

What the Trade War Means to Latin America

By Oscar Ugarteche and Arturo Martínez Paredes | Guest Blog | August 27, 2019

The trade war waged by the United States against China has impacted economic growth and world trade since the fourth quarter of 2018. It implies that trade between the leading economies has slowed and particularly between the European Union, the United States, and China. The cross-border trade of finished products is declining with adverse consequences on the production in these economies. That may explain the reasons for the fall in GDP growth in the United States, the European Union,…

Read More |

UNCITRAL and ISDS Reforms: The Divided West and the Battle by and for the Rest

By Anthea Roberts and Taylor St. John | Guest Blog | May 10, 2019

The UNCITRAL debates over ISDS reforms can serve as a real-world laboratory for observing changes in the national interests and policies of different countries, as well as shifts in their geopolitical weight and alignments. As part of a commitment to transparency, UNCITRAL decided to allow a wide range of observers in the room and to make recordings of the debates available. Such transparency gives non-state actors a chance to analyse these dynamics in real time and to consider not…

Read More |