Affiliation: Columbia University
Bio: Karl P. Sauvant, Ph.D., is Lecturer-in-Law at Columbia Law School; Resident Senior Fellow at the Columbia Center on Sustainable Investment (CCSI), a joint center of Columbia Law School and the Earth Institute at Columbia University; Guest Professor at Nankai University, China; Fellow, Academy of International Business (2011); Honorary Fellow, European International Business Academy (2006).
Until February 2012, Dr. Sauvant was the Founding Executive Director of the VCC, the predecessor of CCSI. There, he sought to make the VCC a leading forum for discussions of issues related to foreign direct investment (FDI) in the global economy and the regulatory framework governing it, focussing in particular on the contribution of FDI to sustainable development. Toward that objective, he launched the Yearbook on International Investment Law and Policy, the Columbia FDI Perspectives, the Columbia FDI Profiles, the annual International Investment Conference, the Investment Law and Policy Speaker Series, and the Emerging Markets Global Players project. He teaches a seminar on FDI and public policy. Until October 2011, he was also the Co-Director of the Millennium Cities Initiative at the Earth Institute, responsible for helping African cities attract investment.
Until July 2005, Dr. Sauvant was Director of the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development’s (UNCTAD’s) Investment Division (DITE), the focal point in the UN system for matters related to FDI, as well as a major interface with the private sector. He created, in 1991, the annual World Investment Report, of which he was the lead author until 2004. In 1992, Dr. Sauvant founded the journal Transnational Corporations, serving as its editor until 2005. He provided intellectual leadership and guidance to a series of 25 monographs on key issues related to international investment agreements, which were published in 2004/05 in three volumes, and he edited, together with Dr. John H. Dunning, a 20-volume Library on Transnational Corporations (published by Routledge). His name is associated with a great number of United Nations publications on FDI over his three decades of service in the UN.
Dr. Sauvant has published extensively on issues related to economic development and various aspects of foreign direct investment. For a complete listing of these works, see here and here.
Dr. Sauvant received a Ph.D. degree from the University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia. He is a national of Germany, married to Silvana F. da Silva, a national of Brazil.
Last Updated: March 2019