the limits of explanation testing the internalization theory of the multinationial enterprise the paper explores the difficulties of testing the internalization approach in the modern theory of the multinational enterprise the structure of the theory is elaborated and the conclusion drawn that testing cannot occur at the most general theoretical level but that the theory requires careful restricting assumptions to be placed on it to allow rigorous testing several empirical circumstances would constitute refutation if they could be shown to hold however the use of unconventional cases or outliers does not constitute disproof more rigour is required in formulating and testing the theory but the current verdict on the theory must be not disproven

on the determinants of direct foreign investment evidence from east and southeast asia abstract a model of derived demand for foreign capital by a multiple product monopolist is estimated for seven asian countries direct foreign investment dfi inflows are estimated to be less elastic with respect to the costs of capital including taxes than to wages and to be more elastic with respect to aggregate demand in export markets than domestic demand the output deterrent effect of higher wages is estimated to outweigh any substitution toward greater capital intensity the estimates also suggest that dfi rises with greater costs within the investors home countries no similar effect occurs with respect to costs in rival host countries and concerns for political stability have overlain economic determinants

state characteristics and the location of foreign direct investment within the united states a conditional logit model of the location decision of foreign firms investing in manufacturing facilities in the united states is developed and estimated the authors results for 1981 83 indicate that states with higher per capita incomes and higher densities of manufacturing activity attracted relatively more foreign direct investment in addition higher wages deterred foreign direct investment while higher unemployment rates attracted it surprisingly higher unionization rates were associated with increased foreign direct investment overall higher taxes deterred foreign direct investment however more extensive transportation infrastructures and larger promotional expenditures were associated with increased foreign direct investment copyright 1991 by mit press

determinants of u s direct investment in the e e c revisited abstract this paper expands upon an earlier work in this review concerning the specification of a model to identify the determinants of u s direct foreign investment dfi in the e e c compared to earlier studies a longer data series is used an improved tariff discrimination proxy is employed and predicted sales are estimated and used as the output variable in the empirical work a variable to capture the effect of the u s capital control programs is also included the findings reaffirm the importance of market size especially in the plant and equipment equations as being an important determinant of dfi strong support was also found for the growth hypothesis consistent statistical support was found for the tariff discrimination hypothesis in addition the findings imply that a variable to capture the effects of fluctuating exchange rates should be included in future studies

uncertainty and incentives in crisis bargaining game free analysis of international conflict we study two different varieties of uncertainty that countries can face in international crises and establish general results about the relationship between these sources of uncertainty and the possibility of peaceful resolution of conflict among our results we show that under some weak conditions there is no equilibrium of any crisis bargaining game that has voluntary agreements and zero probability of costly war we also show that while uncertainty about the other side s cost of war may be relatively benign in peace negotiations uncertainty about the other side s strength in war makes it much more difficult to guarantee peaceful outcomes along the way we are able to assess the degree to which particular modeling assumptions found in the existing literature drive the well known relationship between uncertainty the incentive to misrepresent and costly war we find that while the theoretical connection between war and uncertainty is quite robust to relaxing many modeling assumptions whether uncertainty is about costs or the probability of victory remains important

exchange rate policies and endogenous time preference a dynamic analysis of a small open economy abstract the effects of exchange rate policies are examined for a small open economy with endogenous rate of time preference using optimizing framework and introducing money into the utility function it is shown that a depreciation of the domestic currency generates a surplus in the current account it also leads to an increase in consumption and a decrease in the holdings of real balances in the long run

the dollarization of a small economy within a utility maximizing framework we study the effects of replacing the national currency with the dollar in a small open economy the impact effect is a drop in the levels of liquidity and wealth the economy reaccumulates real balances by reducing consumption and showing a trade surplus the welfare implications of the program depend on the social rate of time preference and the inflation rate differential we show that the u s can improve both its own welfare and that of the small country s by bribing it into switching currencies we study how these results change with the introduction of capital mobility

the armed peace a punctuated equilibrium theory of war according to a leading rationalist explanation war can break out when a large rapid shift of power renders unbelievable a rising state s promise to compensate its declin ing opponent causing the latter to attack preventively this mechanism does not provide a complete and coherent explanation of war because it does not specify how inefficient fighting resolves this commitment problem we present a complete information model of war as a sequence of battles and show that although opportunities for a negotiated settle ment arise throughout the very desirability of peace creates a commitment problem that undermines its likelihood because players have incentives to settle as soon as possible they cannot credibly threaten to fight long enough if an opponent launches a surprise at tack this decreases the expected duration and costs of war and causes mutual deterrence to fail fighting s sheer destruction improves the credibility of these threats by decreasing the benefits from continuing the war equilibrium fighting may involve escalating costs that exceed the value of the stakes by the time peace is negotiated and that leave both players worse off than when the war began

global foreign direct investment flows the role of governance infrastructure abstract it is widely argued that a country s economic performance over time is determined to a great extent by its political institutional and legal environment we refer to these institutions and policies as the governance infrastructure of a country we utilize newly developed indices to examine the effects of governance infrastructure on both foreign direct investment fdi inflows and outflows for a broad sample of developed and developing countries over 1995 97 in addition we examine the role of other forms of infrastructure including human capital and the environment the results clearly indicate that governance infrastructure is an important determinant of both fdi inflows and outflows investments in governance infrastructure not only attract capital but also create the conditions under which domestic multinational corporations emerge and invest abroad it would appear that investments in governance infrastructure are subject to diminishing returns so that the benefits in terms of inflows are most pronounced for smaller and developing economies

adapting the knowledge capital model of the multinational enterprise to trade and investment in business services at some conceptual level trade in goods and services are not that much different however the speed at which trade and foreign investment in services is growing along with the fact that the barriers to these activities are quite different from those for trade in goods prompts us to take a more careful look the paper begins with a general discussion about the various policies and technological constraints that impact foreign trade and the establishment of foreign commercial presence in intermediate business services we then discuss which characteristics an accurate modelling approach must capture following that we develop a model that allows for different regimes of trade and or foreign affiliate production in services using markusen s knowledge capital model simulations show that the pattern of service firm headquarters and office locations can differ considerably depending on whether it is trade investment or both that are either liberalised or become technologically feasible our results find that the welfare and factor price consequences are quite similar across the different scenarios

borrowed power debt finance and the resort to arms military expenditure is often funded by debt and war losers often repudiate some or all of their obligations since governments tend to repay their debt in peace or victory negotiated settlements become inefficient and can affect crisis bargaining and war termination i analyze a complete information model in which players can determine the distribution of power through their military allocations b efore attempting to reach a peaceful bargain i show that players might borrow to improve their military capabilities even when doing so will make it impossible to settle the dispute without fighting this new explanation for war is not driven by commitment problems or informational asymmetries but by the inefficiency of peace imposed by the need to repay the debt wa r is the result of actions that eliminate the bargaining range rather than inability to loc ate mutually acceptable deals in that range as the traditional explanation has it

human capital and fdi inflows to developing countries new empirical evidence abstract despite the dramatic increase in total foreign direct investment fdi flows to developing countries in the last few years the bulk of the inflows has been directed to only a limited number of countries it has been argued that developing countries might enhance their attractiveness as locations for fdi by pursuing policies that raise the level of local skills and build up human resource capabilities nevertheless the empirical evidence in the literature in support of this recommendation for a large sample of developing countries is scant this paper evaluates this argument in the light of the evolution in the structural characteristics of fdi and empirically tests the hypothesis that the level of human capital in host countries may affect the geographical distribution of fdi the empirical findings are a human capital is a statistically significant determinant of fdi inflows b human capital is one of the most important determinants and c its importance has become increasingly greater through time

does service fdi locate differently to manufacturing fdi a regional analysis for great britain jones j and wren c does service fdi locate differently to manufacturing fdi a regional analysis for great britain regional studies this paper analyses the location of foreign direct investment fdi in services at the nuts 2 region level for great britain over 1996 2005 covering the period of growth in fdi it finds strong differences in service fdi location compared with manufacturing fdi unlike manufacturing service fdi location is determined at no higher than the nuts 2 region level while it is more dynamic and converging to the larger markets a similar pattern is found for the services that are most forward linked to manufacturing industries the paper concludes that access to final consumer demand is important for service fdi with implications for uk regional policy

analysing the determinants of us direct investment in mexico in this paper a simple model of foreign direct investment is developed and tested on investment flows from the usa to mexico between 1967 and 1994 using cointegration analysis domestic demand and relative factor costs are found to influence direct investment flows suggesting support for both the cheap labour and market size hypotheses the short run dynamics of the model indicate that exchange rate movements have an effect on the timing of the investment decision

how far away is an intangible services fdi and distance foreign direct investment fdi in services has grown significantly in recent years evidence of spatial relationships in fdi decisions have been provided for goods manufacturing by utilising physical distance based measures of trade costs this paper investigates spatial interactions for services fdi using several distance measures including physical distance genetic distance and transport time across different measures of distance the traditional determinants of outbound fdi activity remain valid for services we also find spatial interdependence for services fdi that is generally supportive of export platform fdi

mutual optimism as a rationalist explanation of war blainey 1988 popularized the argument that crises are more likely to end in war when two nations disagree about their relative bargaining power this is known as the mutual optimism cause of war fey and ramsay 2007 argue that existing models of crisis bargaining cannot properly evaluate this explanation they propose an alternative class of models with features they claim are better suited for the purpose and prove that war cannot occur with positive probability in equilibrium in any model of this class they conclude that the mutual optimism explanation is logically incoherent we provide a modern rationalist specification of the mutual optimism explanation using our standard models and defend them against the five allegations fey and ramsay make against them we further show that their result has little to do with optimism but instead depends on two indefensible assumptions 1 actors can unilaterally avoid war by imposing peace terms on opponents who find them worse than war and 2 the terms of any peace outcome cannot depend on crisis behavior their class of models cannot be used to study crisis bargaining in general and mutual optimism in particular

currency substitution the recent experience of bolivia abstract one of the more puzzling aspects of bolivia s economic performance since 1986 has been the rapid increase in the share of foreign currency deposits in the domestic banking system that has occurred notwithstanding low inflation rates and a high degree of external stability an analysis of the determinants of currency substitution in bolivia shows that economic variables are statistically significant but have a fairly low explanatory power compared to variables that measure the degree of inertia in the currency substitution process hence conventional fiscal and monetary measures may not be sufficient to reverse the process of currency substitution this points toward an interesting asymmetry where currency substitution increases rapidly with macroeconomic instability but is difficult to reverse even after years of macroeconomic stability

central banks at war war is expensive troops must be equipped and weapons must be procured when the enormous borrowing requirements of war make the sovereigns credibility problem more difficult central banks enhance a government s ability to borrow by being the sole direct purchaser of government debt the central bank increases the effective punishment that can be imposed on the government for defaulting on the marginal lender this increases lenders confidence that the government will be punished in case of default making lenders willing to purchase the debt at a lower rate of interest the sovereign dependent on the low borrowing costs offered by the central bank has an incentive to retain the bank data covering the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries reveal that possessing a central bank lowers the sovereign s borrowing costs particularly during times of war

seigniorage and the case for national money in countries with high rates of inflation there is typically movement away from the use of the local currency the paper analyzes the costs and benefits of using a local currency with emphasis on the seigniorage foregone by using a foreign money even if it should be desirable for a country to fix its exchange rate it still loses seigniorage if it does not use its own money the case for using a foreign money then turns largely on the superior discipline imposed on domestic policymakers by removing their control over the money supply alternative methods of imposing discipline are discussed estimates of the amount of seigniorage raised by different governments are presented seigniorage amounts in some cases to about 10 percent of government revenue estimates are also presented of both the annual flow and one time stock costs of giving up use of domestic currencies and instead using the dollar the flow cost is typically about 1 percent of gnp and the stock cost is around 10 percent of gnp

trends in foreign direct investment flows a theoretical and empirical analysis this paper seeks to provide a rationale for changing trends in the flow and determinants of foreign direct investment fdi as a result of macro economic and firm strategy considerations we identify several factors that impact on such trends and develop propositions that could explain the phenomenon generically the study then provides preliminary empirical support for the propositions presented and outlines the path for further research needed to investigate more causal links the statistical analysis of investments by us multinational enterprises mnes reveals significant changes in the regional distribution of fdi and a change in some of its traditional determinants results show that us mnes are now making increasing investments into asia to exploit low wage levels and to secure entry into new markets

military coercion in interstate crises in an international crisis states make demands backed by threats to use force although these threats can be explicit in diplomatic communications they will not generally carry much weight unless substantiated by some show of force military measures designed to convey the commitment to resort to arms if one s demands are not satisfactorily met to have an impact this commitment must be credible it must be in one s interest to carry out the threat if the opponent refuses to comply in an environment where states possess private information about their valuations capabilities or costs credibility can be established by actions that a state unwilling to fight would not want or would not dare to take military moves such as arms buildups troop mobilizations and deployments to the potential zone of operations can alter incentives in a crisis by changing one s expected payoff from the use of force these are tacit bargaining moves that can restructure the strategic context thereby creating and possibly signaling one s commitments while undermining those of the opponent how can states use the military instrument to establish commitments and how does the nature of the instrument affect their ability to communicate them credibly to their adversaries there are two distinct mechanisms for credible signaling in economic models information can be transmitted reliably by sinking costs actors burn money to reveal that they value the disputed issue even more in contrast theories of interstate crisis bargaining usually rely on choices that increase the difference between backing down and fighting actors tie their hands by running higher risks of war to reveal their resolve the first mechanism involves costs that actors pay regardless of outcome and the second involves costs that actors pay only if they fail to carry out some threat or promise

guns butter and anarchy a state in the international system implicit in realism must allocate its limited resources between satisfying its intrinsically valued ends and the means of military power i formalize this guns versus butter problem in a simple infinite horizon model in which two states must continually decide how to allocate their resources and whether to attack the other state the analysis establishes sufficient conditions to ensure the existence of an equilibrium in which neither state attacks shows that there is a strictly pareto dominant pair of peaceful equilibrium payoffs characterizes the unique peaceful markov perfect equilibrium that yields them and describes the comparative statics of the equilibrium allocations more broadly the analysis also suggests that the notion of anarchy has little if any substantive significance distinctively related to international politics and that the problem of absolute and relative gains is superfluous

the role of location related factors in u s banking involvement abroad an empirical examination this study examines the role of major location specific advantages in the international branch banking involvement of u s banks using pooled time series 1976 82 cross sectional thirty countries regression analysis this study finds that the u s business presence in foreign country has a strong positive effect on u s branch banking activity in that country in contrast the local market opportunity appears to have no significant effect these results hold for the entire set of countries as well as each of five subsets developed less developed european latin american and asian countries the openness of the host country to the establishment of new foreign bank branches does affect u s branch banking involvement this effect is most pronounced in the less developed countries particularly those in asia

devaluation levels versus rates abstract in a context of infinitely lived families a la sidrauski where consumers are lump sum compensated for the inflation tax and there is no capital mobility it is shown that a devaluation improves while an increase in the rate of devaluation deteriorates the balance of payments

the determinants of foreign direct investment in services this paper has two main objectives first to consider country specific determinants that attract services fdi and second to compare the importance of these determinants vis a vis traditional determinants that attract manufacturing fdi using oecd countries as our sample and 1980 to 2003 as our time period we consider the determinants of inward fdi in a panel setting our results provide empirical evidence to support the view that no new theories may be necessary to explain the determinants of services fdi

determinants of foreign investment of u s advertising agencies this paper investigates the impact of several factors on the foreign investment of u s advertising agencies by using the theories on the determinants of foreign direct investment by manufacturing firms for the two years examined the hypotheses about the impact of host country market size host country geographic proximity firm size firm s international operations experience oligopolistic reaction and presence of home country customers abroad are all confirmed this paper also investigates the impact of oligopolistic reaction among the top ten and the second ten largest agencies and finds a stronger impact for the former

the capital inflows problem revisited a stylized model of southern cone disinflation in the late 1970s countries in latin america s southern cone initiated attempts to lower domestic inflation rates through the progressive reduction of a preannounced rate of exchange rate devaluation the stabilization programs gave rise to massive capital inflows real exchange rate appreciation and current account deficits this paper develops a stylized intertemporal framework in which the effects of a credible preannounced disinflation scheme can be studied it is shown that even when agents have perfect foresight and markets clear continuously the capital inflows phenomenon and the associated real appreciation may result while unanticipated permanent inflation changes are neutral in the paper anticipated inflation is neutral only in exceptional circumstances a preannounced disinflation operates by altering the path of an expenditure based real domestic interest rate that depends on expected changes in the prices of liquidity services and nontradable consumption goods

dollarization and inflation in a two country optimization model abstract in a two country two currency model this paper examines the conditions of dollarization analyzes the effect of government inflation finance and studies the strategic interdependence of different currency inflation jel f30

rationalist explanations for war realist and other scholars commonly hold that rationally led states can and sometimes do fight when no peaceful bargains exist that both would prefer to war against this view i show that under very broad conditions there will exist negotiated settlements that genuinely rational states would mutually prefer to a risky and costly fight popular rationalist and realist explanations for war fail either to address or to explain adequately what would prevent leaders from locating a less costly bargain essentially just two mechanisms can resolve this puzzle on strictly rationalist terms the first turns on the fact that states have both private information about capabilities and resolve and the incentive to misrepresent it the second turns on the fact that in specific strategic contexts states may be unable credibly to commit to uphold a mutually preferable bargain historical examples suggest that both mechanisms are empirically plausible

the economic effects of the uk government s proposed brexit deal the focus of our analysis is on how the uk government s proposed brexit deal is likely to affect the economy first we assess how trade migration foreign direct investment productivity and contributions to the eu budget might change by reviewing current proposals against historical evidence second we use the national institute global econometric model nigem to analyse the macroeconomic effects our assessment is that trade with the eu especially in services would be more costly after brexit this would be likely to have adverse effects on living standards in the uk our central estimate is that if the government s proposed brexit deal is implemented then gdp in the longer term will be around 3 lower per head than it would have been had the uk stayed in the eu if the uk were to stay in a customs union with the eu or if the irish backstop position was to be invoked there would still be a hit to gdp per capita of 2 these estimates represent our considered view of the economic impact of the government s proposed brexit deal but they are themselves uncertain as there is no historical precedent of a country leaving a major trading block such as the eu

mergers and acquisitions trade a global value chain analysis the present paper deals with how the insertion in international trade and global value chains gvcs of countries affects their capacity of attracting foreign mergers and acquisitions m as to this end we combine data for bilateral m as and trade in value added for the period 2001 15 and estimate an augmented gravity equation results indicate that trade openness per se does not favour m as nevertheless bilateral free trade agreements heterogeneity of destinations sources for exports imports of intermediate and final goods and position and participation in global value chains are relevant for explaining bilateral m as moreover their role is significantly different depending on the level of development of the home and host countries

capital mobility and devaluation in an optimizing model with rational expectations this paper examines the effects of ex change rate policies when individuals maximize lifetime utility on the basis of rational expectations about the future the economy studied is one in which the authorities allow free mobility of capital under a crawling peg exchange rate regime many industrializing economies have adopted a crawling peg as a means of reconciling disparate inflation rates at home and abroad and some recent efforts to use the rate of crawl as an instrument of anti inflation policy have attracted considerable interest see carlos diaz alejandro tools similar to those employed here have been applied by guillermo calvo forthcoming to study this type of exchange rate management under conditions of capital immobility this abstract was borrowed from another version of this item

positive theories of multinational banking eclectic theory versus internalisation theory the choice of an appropriate paradigm to consider banks motivation to enter a new market and their subsequent performance is an important issue in multinational banking this paper discusses this issue within the context of two competing theories of the multinational enterprise and the special theories of banking as applied to the multinational enterprise the conclusion of this paper is that while it may not be possible to empirically distinguish between the propositions of eclectic theory and internalisation theory intemalisation theory offers a framework with greater internal consistency for the study of the multinational bank further any empirical studies must be conducted within the framework of the appropriate special theories consistent with internalisation theory these special theories have developed over time in an unstructured fashion and the application of internalisation theory provides a cohesive framework within which to analyse these theories

service multinationals conceptualization measurement and theory the application of mne definitions measurements and theories to international services is still in its infancy despite the considerable size and growth of this sector there are problems in defining classifying measuring comparing and explaining service mnes but they do not require special definitions and theories still research to date suggests 1 delinking the concepts of multinational enterprise and foreign direct investment under certain conditions and 2 qualifying the nature of ownership internalization and location advantages in fdi theory as far as service mnes are concerned

policy and non policy determinants of u s equity foreign direct investment this study examined the effects of policy and non policy variables on the location of new u s direct investment abroad as distinct from reinvested earnings of existing affiliates using 1977 and 1982 benchmark data the data revealed statistically significant effects for investment incentives positive performance requirements negative and host country effective tax rates negative with interesting differences between the two time periods and between developed versus developing countries significance was also found for non policy variables such as political stability cultural distance gdp per capita and infrastructure

trade shows trade missions and state governments increasing fdi and high tech exports in this paper we propose that states which attract comparatively more fdi should concentrate on activities designed to draw additional foreign investment rather than on activities designed to promote exports results indicate that states with comparatively more fdi have greater success in their use of trade missions for the purpose of inward fdi attraction and in their use of trade shows to promote high tech exports

the globalization of service multinationals in the triad regions japan western europe and north america in this study we empirically investigate the determinants of foreign direct investment of service multinationals based in the triad regions japan western europe and north america foreign investment decisions of 168 of the largest service firms in nine service industries over the period 1976 1986 are analyzed and hypotheses that are developed based on findings of manufacturing fdi and studies of single service industries are tested using a logistic regression model the applicability of the mne fdi theories to service mnes is tested empirically over a broad range of mne home countries and service industries differences in the international behavior of service mnes based in different countries are uncovered and analyzed

determinants of us direct foreign investment in the caribbean this study evaluates two groups of variables economic and structural locational associated with us short and long run direct foreign investment dfi in the caribbean over the 1983 1994 period separate generalized least square models for the caribbean and latin america were estimated to determine whether differences existed between the two regions as to the variables associated with the levels of dfi this helped provide insights as to the strategies that should be maintained or introduced to give the caribbean a competitive edge in attracting the limited amounts of us dfi likely to be available for investment in the western hemisphere

motivations for fdi and domestic capital formation changing patterns of foreign direct investment fdi stock have raised important questions about their impact on domestic economies for example it is often thought that increased inward fdi contributes to domestic capital formation whereas increased outward fdi reduces it we demonstrate that such generalizations are inappropriate we develop hypotheses linking the impact of fdi to the underlying motivation for investment these hypotheses are tested using available canadian industry level data the implication of our results is that rapid growth in outward fdi relative to inward growth should not be considered as a negative development and may reflect success

financial and political risks in us direct foreign investment this paper examines the risk of us direct foreign investments over the period 1982 98 in 59 host countries the first part of the analysis builds an empirical model to explain the time series and cross country patterns of return on capital the estimation then uses the return on assets roa as a measure of the return on capital and investigates its determinants there are four main findings first the roa in a majority of countries does not simply track the worldwide roa second some cross country differences are explained by financial risks third unexplained country risk is qualitatively and quantitatively related to unobserved political risk fourth unexplained country risk is also compensated with a higher roa enhancing its credibility as a measure of political risk the unexplained country risk is thus used to calculate a new index of political risk ratings for 56 host countries that may be useful to managers investors policymakers and academics