About Legalization the Definition “Investment”

Abstract

Introduction. The article deals with issues of the concept of “investment” in economic and legal theory, in the legislation and law practice in order to identify effective legal regulation of relations arising in this area. It should be noted that investment legislation is a complex structured system of the acts with different purposes, content and regulation methods. It is also shown that there aren't only acts of different levels and different legal force (acts of an international acts, national acts, as well as subordinate normative acts), but also of a different legal nature. For this reasons there aren't universal legal definitions of such concepts as “investment”, “investment activity”, “investor”, “investment agreement”, which are the basic categories for all areas of investment activity.Methodology. The research methods are general scientific and private legal: analysis and synthesis, induction and deduction, systemic, logical, dialectical, structural and functional, formal legal, comparative legal methods and others. The research aims to investigate the problems related to the content of the concept of “investment”. It analyzes academic literature and investment legislation on this sphere, investigates, describes different approaches to the definition “investment”. Results. The texts of numerous regulatory legal acts regulating investment activities contain their own definitions of the listed basic categories, which are of regulatory importance only for the relevant sphere of investment relations. For this reason, in legal doctrine and law enforcement practice, difficulties arise with the legalization of the concept of “investment”.Conclusions. The paper is concerned with identifies the economic and legal features of the concept in question, which help to distinguish it from related categories and reveal its essence. It is stressed that the investment characterizing: 1) aim, 2) risk, 3) period and 4) object.