The Updated Investment Facilitation Index

This paper helps to conceptualize investment facilitation and introduces the updated Investment Facilitation Index (IFI) which quantifies the current level of practice in investment facilitation on the country level. Given the progress in the WTO negotiations, the main purpose of this study is to improve the concept of investment facilitation developed by Berger et al. (2021) by reviewing the incorporated measures in the light of the latest available documents and extending the country coverage preferably to all WTO members. Moreover, we update the weighting scheme by conducting a new survey and interviews with experts. The resulting database provides a basis for analyses of the economic impacts of a potential multilateral investment facilitation agreement and allows to measure the costs associated with its implementation. Furthermore, the index allows to identify reform gaps of the economies participating in the WTO negotiations and can be used to tailor capacity-building initiatives in developing countries.