Analysis and models of bilateral investment treaties using a social networks approach

Bilateral investment treaties (BITs) are agreements between two countries for the reciprocal encouragement, promotion and protection of investments in each other's territories by companies based in either country. Germany and Pakistan signed the first BIT in 1959 and since then, BITs are one of the most popular and widespread form of international agreement. In this work we study the proliferation of BITs using a social networks approach. We propose a network growth model that dynamically replicates the empirical topological characteristics of the BIT network.

This is a preprint version of the article. The final version may be found at < http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.physa.2010.04.001 >.