When negotiating investment treaties, states balance two goals: providing strong protections for investors (investor protection), which is thought to attract foreign direct investment, and maintaining the ability to regulate their economies (regulatory autonomy). In this article we argue that treaty content can tell us about the latent preferences that states have over the level of investor protection enshrined in BITs. We use an item response theory (IRT) model and a dataset of 1,144 treaties to estimate latent preferences on this scale for signatory countries. Our measure is of use to scholars interested in studying bilateral investment treaties, international law, and foreign direct investment, and our model is of use to anyone aiming to estimate latent preferences from jointly produced manifestations.

中文翻译：

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国家想要什么：从国际投资条约内容估计理想点

在谈判投资条约时，各国平衡两个目标：为投资者提供强有力的保护（投资者保护），这被认为可以吸引外国直接投资，以及保持监管经济的能力（监管自主）。在本文中，我们认为条约内容可以告诉我们各国对 BIT 中规定的投资者保护水平的潜在偏好。我们使用项目响应理论 (IRT) 模型和包含 1,144 项条约的数据集来估计签署国在此范围内的潜在偏好。我们的衡量标准对有兴趣研究双边投资条约、国际法和外国直接投资的学者有用，我们的模型适用于任何旨在从共同产生的表现中估计潜在偏好的人。