Timely warnings and examples of industry interference in relation to tobacco, alcohol, food and breast milk substitutes are given in the editorial by Tangcharoensathien et al. Such interference is rife at national levels and also at the global level. In an era of ‘private public partnerships’ the alcohol and food industries have succeeded in insinuating themselves into the global health environ...

Tax treaties are often viewed as a mechanism for eliminating tax competition, however this approach ignores the need for bargaining over the treaty’s terms. This paper focuses on how bargaining can affect the withholding taxes set under the treaty. In a simple framework, we develop hypotheses about patterns in treaty tax rates. A key determinant for these patterns is the relative size of bilate...

AIB Insights 3 The rules of The game for international business (IB) are increasingly set in bilateral and multilateral treaties between nation states. Throughout the second half of the 20th century, this regulatory framework has evolved to facilitate international business, and thus to enable economic globalization. Yet, many treaties have been controversial as citizens do not appreciate their...

The right to health of migrant populations, whether they are foreign nationals, foreign workers, tourists, asylum seekers or refugees, is enshrined in international human rights treaties. The effectiveness of the implementation of this fundamental right thus lies in national legal frameworks. In spite of its long humanitarian tradition, Switzerland has a strict migration policy, and while it ha...

Though research suggests that international regimes that coordinate economic and security policy can alter state behavior, research examining the effect of human rights treaties on state behavior has found that these agreements do little to curb repressive practices. However, those studies neglect to account for the fact that several of the statelevel characteristics which are known to affect r...

The Conventions and US jurisprudence. Hawken and Kulick (2) dispute my assertion that in setting up legal nonmedical markets Washington and Colorado clearly contravene the conventions. I acknowledge my assertion was too strong, if it is read as implying that US courts would necessarily decide this way. Hawken and Kulick conclude that nations “with federal systems of government” are not bound by...

What actions can governments in developing countries take to make their economies more appealing to foreign investors? One increasingly prominent answer focuses on the effect of signing onto international economic agreements, showing that countries’ participation in investment and trade treaties is associated with greater inflow of FDI. Yet the nature of this empirical relationship remains uncl...