Abstract<br/>Foreign Direct Investment has been pursued to economically integrate countries and to increase economic development. This has been accomplished partly through the WTO and Free Trade Agreements (FTAs), which have spurred foreign direct investment (FDI) by removing barriers to trade tariff and nontariff. In addition, they also created a framework and legal guidelines and regulations for investment and trade. Research suggests that this is the case when looking at country level data before and after FTAs go into effect. Although the existing literature offers important insights a weakness is it does not often look at the relationship between FTAs and FDI by analyzing firm level data. This is an important relationship to be studied as, beyond governments multinational companies (MNCs) are one of few key actors that can benefit the most and have the capabilities to take advantage of these FTAs. Therefore, studying the relationship between MNCs and their investments both before and after an FTA is signed is important to see if FDI would change in response to Free Trade Agreements and have an impact at the MNC level deployment of FDI. This would be significant to see if the current steady for attracting FDI is working. This is also important as FDI helps countries develop. Therefore, it can be seen as an exceptional contribution to the overall research on the subject. In this paper I will explore how companies have reacted to the formation of FTAs as well as the distinct effects of North-South South-South and North-North Agreements on firm’s investment strategies, using firm level data and drawing on interviews with multiple trade officials.

Music streaming services have affected the music industry from both a financial and legal standpoint. Their current business model affects stakeholders such as artists, users, and investors. These services have been scrutinized recently for their imperfect royalty distribution model. Covid-19 has made these discussions even more relevant as touring income has come to a halt for musicians and the live entertainment industry. <br/>Under the current per-stream model, it is becoming exceedingly hard for artists to make a living off of streams. This forces artists to tour heavily as well as cut corners to create what is essentially “disposable art”. Rapidly releasing multiple projects a year has become the norm for many modern artists. This paper will examine the licensing framework, royalty payout issues, and propose a solution.

Using panel data for 28 countries, all within the European Union from the period spanning 2012 to 2019, this paper empirically investigates the following question: do the savings or investment rates have an impact on the overall trade balance of each country? If so, how? With three econometric models, it estimates impacts and variations between all European Union countries, euro countries, and non-euro countries, and evaluates results in the context in which they are measured.