Foreign Ownership and Market Entry

When a firm wishes to sell in a foreign market, it can do so either by exporting to that market or by investing in a local production unit. The latter mode of servicing a foreign market is referred to as a foreign direct investment (FDI). International production has increased rapidly during the last two decades, and particularly since the second half of the 1980s. This paper describes the facts, explains why firms choose FDI, and evaluates FDI in terms of impact on host economies. Particular emphasis is placed on firms’ choice between the two types of foreign investment; “greenfields”, which involves the establishment of a new production facility, and cross-border mergers and acquisitions, which involves taking over an existing production unit in a foreign market. The paper also contains a fairly extensive discussion of the consequences of economic integration on market entry.

Rent seekers in rentier states: When greed brings peace

Are natural resources a source of conflict or stability? Empirical studies demonstrate that rents from natural resources, and in particular oil, are an important source of civil war. Allegedly, resource rents attract rent seekers, which destabilize society. However, there is a large literature on how so-called rentier states manage to pacify opposition groups by handing out special favors. The present paper attempts to bridge the gap between the rent-seeking view of resource rents as a source of conflict and the rentier state view which emphasizes the role of resource rents in promoting peace and stability, and show how one may lead to the other. The mechanism that we highlight relies on the notion that higher rents may activate more interest groups in a power struggle. We demonstrate that the associated increased cost of conflict may in fact promote social stability. The peaceful solution is upheld by a self reinforcing transfer program, in the form of patronage employment. The chance of conflict and rent dissipation in our model is highest for intermediate levels of resource rents, where the government cannot make credible commitments to the opposition groups.Rent seeking; rentier states; resource rents; conflict; patronage employment

Tax Competition and International Public Goods

A well known result in the tax competition literature is that tax rates are set too low in the Nash equilibrium to finance an efficient level of public consumption goods. In this model we introduce international spillovers in public goods provision and show that such spillovers reduce, and in the limiting case of perfect spillovers, eliminate tax competition. There is, however, always underprovision of the public good in equilibrium, since larger spillovers increase the problem of free riding. In an extension to the model, we demonstrate that congestion costs may result in overprovision of the public good.Tax competition for capital, international public goods

Winners and losers from an international investment agreement

Recent attempts at reaching an international investment agreement have been met with considerable opposition and failed. An important reason for this failure is the diverging interests between the parties involved. The present paper focuses on the interests of host countries, with difference in market size as the source of conflict. We analyse the welfare effects of an international investment agreement as a function of the intensity of technological spillovers, the technology gap between the investor and host country firms, intra-regional trade costs, and the difference in market size.

Rent Seekers in Rentier States: When Greed Brings Peace

Are natural resources a source of conflict or stability? Empirical studies demonstrate that rents from natural resources, and in particular oil, are an important source of civil war. Allegedly, resource rents attract rent seekers, which destabilize society. However, there is a large literature on how so-called rentier states manage to pacify opposition groups by handing out special favors. The present paper attempts to bridge the gap between the rent-seeking view of resource rents as a source of conflict and the rentier state view which emphasizes the role of resource rents in promoting peace and stability, and show how one may lead to the other. The mechanism that we highlight relies on the notion that higher rents may activate more interest groups in a power struggle. We demonstrate that the associated increased cost of conflict may in fact promote social stability. The peaceful solution is upheld by a self reinforcing transfer program, in the form of patronage employment. The chance of conflict and rent dissipation in our model is highest for intermediate levels of resource rents, where the government cannot make credible commitments to the opposition groups.Rent Seeking, Rentier States, Resource Rents, Conflict, Patronage Employment

Resource Rents, Power, and Political Stability

We study the association between resource rents and political stability, highlighting the importance of the distribution of political power as a mediating factor. We present a simple theoretical model showing that increased rents are likely to be positively associated with the stability of a powerful incumbent while destabilizing a less powerful incumbent. Our empirical analysis confirms this prediction: Using panel data for more than 120 countries from 1984-2009, our results show that rents can promote political stability, but only when the political power is sufficiently concentrated. Indeed, if the incumbent is sufficiently weak, rents fuel instability. Our main results hold when we control for the effects of income, quality of institutions, time varying common shocks, country fixed effects and various additional covariates

On the importance of openness for industrial policy design in developing countries

Should industrial policy be targeted to a few sectors or be more broad based and therefore more neutral? Our theoretical analysis demonstrates that access to foreign markets is key to answering this question. We show that in a less open economy, industrial policy should be targeted, while in a more open economy, broad based policies are likely to be more effective. One implication of this results is that deregulation is likely to be more successful in a relatively open economy than in a more closed economy. Indeed, deregulation with limited foreign market access may lead to deindustrialization. We provide empirical results that support these predictions.Industrialization, policy design, policy reform, economic growth, openess

On the Distributive Impact of Privatizing the Commons: The Case of Renewable Resources

The privatization of a natural resource is often proposed as a solution to the degradation of natural resources under open access, known as the Tragedy of the Commons. However, this efficiency improvement may come at a distributional cost (Weitzman, 1974) as traditional users of the resource lose income and employment unless they are given a large enough share of the property rights. The present paper demonstrates that, in the case of renewable resources, traditional users may gain from privatization even if they are denied ownership of the resource. Indeed, a private owner maximizes profits by preserving the resource, which results in long-term increases in employment. Hence, the short term losses to traditional users from lower labor demand and loss of rent, must be weighted against the long term gains from employment creation. We also derive the conditions under which privatization is Pareto-improving, benefiting both the new and traditional owners of the natural resource.Renewable resources, Common access, Privatization, Employment Creation

Regional Policy and rent-seeking

The most important policy instrument to promote regional development in the European Union is Strucutral Funds, covering approximately a third of the EU budget. An empirical analysis demonstrates that these funds have on average been ineffective in speeding up the process of convergence with in the European Union. Only in countries with sufficiently good institutions have these funds contributed positively to regional development. Our analysis attempts to shed light on how investment subsidies may create industrialization, and more importantly, how poor quality institutions may prevent this strategy from succeeding. JEL codes: Keywords: Regional policy, rent seeking, industrialization

Decentralization and the Fate of Minorities

This paper analyses the welfare effects of a change from centralized to decentralized political authority. The potential disadvantage with decentralization in our model is that local dominant groups with rather “extreme” preferences may win the vote and implement policies that harm the well-being of local minorities. When the national median voter represents a “moderate” position, centralization can be seen as a way of protecting the interests of local minorities. Our main result is that the centralized solution may welfare dominate decentralization even in the absence of scale economics and interregional spillovers. We also demonstrate that increased segregation, increased mobility, and increased heterogeneity in preferences, factors that are normally considered to be arguments in favor of decentralization, may reduce the attractiveness of the decentralized solution from a welfare perspective. Finally, we show that when the national median voter is an “extreme” type, decentralization may represent a way of protecting local minority interests.