Which is more reassuring to foreign investors—domestic laws or international agreements? A substantial literature argues that foreign investment may be underprovided, because governments cannot offer credible guarantees that judicial institutions are impartial and that investors will be able to fairly resolve disputes with business partners and enforce contracts. This time inconsistency problem deters profitable business partnerships between foreign investors and domestic firms in the host country. Consequently, for emerging market leaders seeking to deepen their countries’ integration into global value chains (GVCs), enhancing the confidence of investors in contracting institutions is critical. In this paper, we study the emerging market of Vietnam to examine which type of reassurance mechanism is most successful. Using a survey of 1,583 foreign firms, we inform investors about either a domestic law or international treaty designed to strengthen commercial arbitration procedures. We find that priming foreign firms about the international investment agreement has a larger positive impact on their views about the future profitability of their projects and the likelihood of contracting with other firms in GVCs than simply learning about the commitments in domestic law.

中文翻译：

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通过国际协议促进全球价值链：来自越南的证据

哪个更让外国投资者放心——国内法还是国际协定？大量文献认为，外国投资可能供应不足，因为政府无法提供可靠的保证，即司法机构的公正性以及投资者将能够公平地解决与商业伙伴的纠纷并执行合同。这种时间不一致问题阻碍了外国投资者与东道国国内公司之间的有利可图的商业伙伴关系。因此，对于寻求深化本国融入全球价值链 (GVC) 的新兴市场领导者而言，增强投资者对签约机构的信心至关重要。在本文中，我们研究了越南的新兴市场，以检验哪种类型的保证机制最成功。使用 1 的调查，583 家外国公司，我们向投资者通报旨在加强商业仲裁程序的国内法或国际条约。我们发现，向外国公司介绍国际投资协议对他们对其项目未来盈利能力的看法以及与全球价值链中的其他公司签订合同的可能性比简单地了解国内法中的承诺具有更大的积极影响。