Identifying the factors influencing the development of bilateral investment treaties with health safeguards: a Machine Learning-based link prediction approach

A network analysis approach, complemented by machine learning (ML) techniques, is applied to analyse the factors influencing Bilateral Investment Treaties (BITs) at the country level. Using the Electronic Database of Investment Treaties, BITs with health safeguards from 167 countries were charted, resulting in 534 connections with countries as nodes and their BITs as edges. Network analysis found that, on average, a country established BITs with six other nations. Additionally, we used node embedding techniques to generate features from the network, such as the Jaccard coefficient, resource allocation, and Adamic Adar for downstream link prediction. This study employed five tree-based ML models to predict future BIT formations with health inclusion. The eXtreme Gradient Boosting model proved to be superior, achieving a 64.02% accuracy rate. Notably, the Common Neighbor centrality feature and the Capital Account Balance Ratio emerged as influential factors in creating new BITs with health inclusions. Beyond economic considerations, our study highlighted a vital intersection: the nexus between BITs, economic growth, and public health policies. In essence, this research underscores the importance of safeguarding public health in BITs and showcases the potential of ML in understanding the intricacies of international treaties.