The effectiveness of bilateral investment treaties in attracting foreign direct investment: The case of Serbia

Over the past several decades there has been increasing competition among countries to attract foreign direct investment, which is often hypothesised to positively affect the development of host countries. Bilateral investment treaties are one of the policy instruments the host countries often use as a means to encourage foreign direct investment inflows. In this study, we aim to explore the effectiveness of bilateral investment treaties in achieving these goals in the case of Serbia. Using the panel data on Serbia and its 198 partner economies observed in the period 2010-2019, we estimate a gravity model of foreign direct investment inflows by applying the Poisson pseudo-maximum likelihood method. We found that ratified bilateral investment treaties have a statistically significant positive effect on foreign direct investment inflows in Serbia. Furthermore, the quality of the treaties was found to positively affect the inflows, whereby the anti-discriminatory provisions seem to be the most important. The results imply that Serbia could attract more foreign direct investment by concluding new bilateral investment treaties and improving the quality of the existing ones.