Nearly 2700 international investment agreements protect foreign investment against host country policies. This paper analyzes the design and implications of their contentious provisions regarding regulatory expropriations. It derives conditions under which “carve-out” compensation mechanisms, similar to those in actual agreements, solve underinvestment and overregulation problems and simultaneously distribute surplus according to countries' bargaining power. The paper examines a number of additional policy relevant issues, for instance, how to modify agreements when carve-out compensation is inefficient, whether agreements cause “regulatory chill,” and the different motives and distributional consequences of North-South versus North-North agreements.

近2700项国际投资协议保护外国投资不受东道国政策的影响。本文分析了有关监管征收的有争议条款的设计及其含义。它得出了这样一种条件，在这种条件下，类似于实际协议中的“分担式”补偿机制，可以解决投资不足和监管过度的问题，并根据各国的议价能力同时分配盈余。本文研究了许多其他与政策相关的问题，例如，在剥离补偿无效时如何修改协议，协议是否引起“监管冷漠”以及南北协议与北北协议的不同动机和分配后果。