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About Karl P. Sauvant

Karl P. Sauvant, PhD
 
 
Dr. Sauvant is Senior Fellow, Columbia Center on Sustainable Investment (CCSI), Columbia Law School. He received his BA equivalent from the Free University Berlin (Germany) in Political Science in 1968 and his PhD in International Relations from the University of Pennsylvania in 1975.
 
Dr. Sauvant had his career in the United Nations (1973-2005), from which he retired as Director of UNCTAD’s Investment Division, having been responsible for the Division’s research, technical assistance and consensus-building among governments on matters related to foreign direct investment (FDI) and development. While at the UN, he founded, in 1991, the prestigious annual World Investment Report (and was its lead author until 2004), and, in 1992, the Transnational Corporations journal, serving as its Editor until his retirement. 
 
Upon retirement from the UN, Dr. Sauvant established (in 2006) what is now the Columbia Center on Sustainable Investment, a leading think tank in its field (stepping down as its Executive Director in 2012); there, he launched the Yearbook on International Investment Law and Policy (OUP, editor of the first four editions) and the Columbia FDI Perspectives, of which he continues as the Editor-in-Chief. He was Lecturer-in-Law at Columbia Law School from 2006 to 2023, teaching a seminar on “FDI and public policy”. 
 
Dr. Sauvant had promoted, since 1998, the establishment of a facility that helps developing countries negotiate large-scale investment contracts with foreign investors (during 2011-2016 in cooperation with Peter Eigen); Germany took up the proposal, and the G7 endorsed it in 2014, under the name of “CONNEX”; Germany established the CONNEX Support Unit in 2017. He is Co-Chair of the CONNEX Advisory Committee. He launched, in 2015, a proposal for an international support program for sustainable investment facilitation. Structured discussions on a multilateral Investment Facilitation for Development Agreement began in the WTO in 2018 which were upgraded to negotiations in 2020; the text negotiations were concluded in November 2023. He also advocated, since 2004 (together with Anna Joubin-Bret) the establishment of an Advisory Center on International Investment Law, a proposal that was put on UNCITRAL’s agenda in October 2019; UNCITRAL’s Commission on International Trade Law adopted in principle the statute of an Advisory Centre on International Investment Dispute Resolution in July 2024.
 
Dr. Sauvant is a Fellow of the Academy of International Business and an Honorary Fellow of the European International Business Academy. His primary research interests are FDI, multinational enterprises and their impact on development. He has published extensively on multinational enterprises, FDI, economic development, and services (his recent publications are available at https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/cf_dev/AbsByAuth.cfm?per_id=2461782; earlier publications are available at https://works.bepress.com/karl_sauvant/ ). He can be reached at karlsauvant@gmail.com.  
 

 
 

Positions

Present Senior Research Scholar at the Columbia Center on Sustainable Investment and Lecturer-in-Law at Columbia Law School, Columbia University
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Curriculum Vitae

Disciplines

Research Interests

Improving the international investment law and policy regime, Learning from past experiences in investment rule-making, China’s emergence as an important outward investor and implications for international investment law, and Helping the least developed countries to attract FDI and to benefit more from it
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Honors and Awards

  • 2010 Inducted as a Fellow of the Academy of International Business
  • 2006 European International Business Academy Distinguished Honorary Fellow of the Year Award
  • 2006 Chalfen Memorial Lecture, British Institute of International and Comparative Law, London, 27 April 2006, on "Transnational Corporations and the United Nations: The Evolution of the International Policy and Legal Debate over 30 Years”
  • 2003 Was named Guest Professor, Nankai University (China) and Honorary Chair of the University’s Centre on Transnational Corporations
  • 1982-1983 Ford Foundation grant
  • 1980-1981 Ford Foundation grant (with O. Jankowitsch)
  • 1978-1979 International Foundation for Development Alternatives and The Third World Forum research grant
  • 1977 Ford Foundation grant (with O. Jankowitsch)
  • 1972 Bourse de Recherche Universitaire from the Commission of the European Communities (with B. Mennis)
  • 1972 Research grant from the Sektion Internationale Politik of the German Political Science Association
  • 1971-1972 University of Pennsylvania Penfield Dissertation Fellowship
  • 1970-1972 Foreign Policy Research Institute Fellowship, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
  • 1969-1970 University of Pennsylvania Fellowship
  • 1968-1969 Freie Universität Berlin - University of Pennsylvania exchange scholar
  • 1968 Fulbright Travel Grant
  • 1965 Humboldt Award for outstanding achievements in community affairs

Courses

  • FDI and Public Policy

Education

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1975 PhD, University of Pennsylvania ‐ International Relations
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1972 Summer Institute for Social Research, The University of Michigan, Ann Arbor ‐ Program of the Inter-University Consortium for Political Research
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1969 M.A., University of Pennsylvania ‐ International Relations
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1966 - 1968 Zwischenprüfung (B.A. equivalent), Freie Universität Berlin, Berlin, Federal Republic of Germany ‐ Political Science
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Links

Books (61)