Profile

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; and Guest Professor at Nankai University, China. He is the Editor-in-Chief of the Columbia FDI Perspectives.

Prior to that, until February 2012, Dr. Sauvant was the Founding Executive Director of the Vale Columbia Center on Sustainable International Investment, the predecessor of CCSI. Until July 2005, Dr. Sauvant was Director of the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development's (UNCTAD's) Investment Division, the focal point in the UN system for matters related to foreign direct investment, as well as a major interface with the private sector. While at the UN, he created, in 1991, the prestigious annual World Investment Report, of which he was the lead author and head of the team preparing the report until 2004.

In 2011, he was elected Fellow of the Academy of International Business; in 2006, he was elected an Honorary Fellow of the European International Business Academy. He received his Ph.D. from the University of Pennsylvania in 1975.

He is the author of, or responsible for, a substantial number of publications on issues related to economic development, FDI and services (see: papers.ssrn.com/sol3/cf_dev/AbsByAuth.cfm?per_id=2461782 and www.works.bepress.com/karl_sauvant/).