The question whether private international law has a useful role to play in process of arbitration is framed too broadly to produce a concise and useful answer. It is also complicated by the inveterate tension between the doctrinal view, on the one hand, that lex facit arbitrum,1 the law makes the arbitration, and the pragmatic view on the other, that arbitration is a private matter whose very purpose is to keep the process of dispute resolution as far away from the courts, legal procedure and legal doctrine, as possible. It is further complicated by a perception, held by many if confessed by fewer, that private international lawyers do not really understand arbitration, and are forever trying to force it into a mould created and devised by them for proceedings before courts and judgments given by courts.

This chapter focuses on individual-level aspects of inclusion in entrepreneurial ecosystems, using examples from gender-focused ecosystems research in Boston, Massachusetts, as part of broader research carried out by the authors between 2014 and 2017. Using data from fieldwork carried out in Boston, we outline how individual-level gender biases operate in entrepreneurial ecosystems and how they impact women entrepreneurs differently than male entrepreneurs. Our focus is explicitly on the gendering of social capital and trust within entrepreneurial ecosystems, as we highlight their gendered dimensions which lead to exclusion for women, even if ‘unintentionally’.

The International Bank for Reconstruction and Development (“IBRD” or “World Bank”) was established by the United Nations Monetary and Financial Conference held at Bretton Woods in 1944.1 It was tasked with facilitating the investment of capital in economies destroyed or disrupted by World War II and channeling capital to countries in need of reconstruction and development.

The issue of applicable law is something that all investment tribunals must inevitably address. Yet it is one of the most misunderstood and misaddressed (or ignored) topics in the field. The basics of applicable law are relatively straightforward – the law applicable to the dispute is that which arbitrators use to come to a decision about whether or not there has been a breach of that law. Thus, whether they are adjudicating a contractual or treaty-based dispute, investment arbitrators must first identify the law applicable to the dispute and then use it to assess the liability of the defending party or parties. These statements are deceptively simple, since the selection of applicable law, its application, and its intersection with other laws, whether international or domestic, continue to be contentious and difficult questions.

It is a truth universally acknowledged – or at least it should be1 – that the importance of arbitration between States extends beyond the subject matter of the arbitrations themselves and has wider implications for the peace of the world. The idea that wars can be avoided if States have access to peaceful means of settling the disputes which might lead to war has played an important part in international relations for at least 150 years. Yet it is an idea which has waxed and waned in popularity. Its apogee was in the last decades of the nineteenth century and the first years of the twentieth. At that time there were many – by no means all of them international lawyers – who saw international arbitration as one of the principal instruments for preserving the peace.2 That idealism waned after the World War I.

The third chapter focuses explicitly on the relevance of gender for entrepreneurial ecosystems. The chapter first discusses the differences between sex, gender, and gender relations to lay the foundation for a dynamic understanding of actors and entrepreneurial ecosystems. Guided by feminist perspectives in entrepreneurship and sociology the chapter provides theoretical insights, derived from the various ways in which gender is studied, on how gender can be conceptualized and how inclusion is a multifaceted concept and practice. The chapter then offers a guiding definition of gender inclusion in relation to entrepreneurial ecosystems and moves on to provide insights about how to study it in relation to individuals, organizations, and sociocultural norms at the same time. In doing so, this chapter provides a multifactor and multilevel gender framework for understanding economic inclusion in relation to entrepreneurial ecosystems.

Chapter 2 of Community Disaster Recovery: Moving from Vulnerability to Resilience examines the case of Colorado’s extreme floods of 2013, describing the event, damages, and the aftermath during the early weeks of disaster recovery.It sets the stage for subsequent chapters that empirically assess the disaster recovery processes and outcomes. The extreme flooding that occurred in Colorado in 2013 began with heavy rain from a stationary front, with the worst coming on September 11 and 12. The rivers along Colorado’s Front Range swelled from the storm beginning September 9. Flash flooding soon occurred in the narrow mountain canyons and communities, overwhelming communities nestled at the mouths of canyons. This floodwater then slowly moved east to the agricultural communities in the plains including Evans. Seventeen Colorado counties across nearly 200 miles (north to south) were affected by the flood event, for a total of 4,500 square miles.