FDI in Emerging Markets: A Home-Country View

In the 1950s and 60s, the American view of foreign direct investment(FDI) in emerging markets, then called less-developed or developing countries, was that it was desirable for three reasons: as a vehicle for economic development and a partial substitute for foreign aid; to promote economic stability and democracy; and as part of the strategy to contain Communism. In the 1990's, the relationship between such investment and economic development is regarded as more uncertain, the Cold War is over, and many of the developing countries have emerged as serious players in global competition, thus altering the context in which such FDI is viewed. Over the 40-50 intervening years, the U.S. economy has shrunk as a proportion of the global total and has become much more open to foreign trade, thus increasing the exposure of American firms to the global economy and reducing their market power. At the same time, both the nature and the scale of FDI have changed substantially, and the general stance of emerging market countries toward such investment has moved from widespread hostility and suspicion to widespread efforts to attract it. For all these reasons, U.S. policies regarding FDI in emerging-market countries are far more affected by fears regarding its impact on our own economy than they used to be. Among the concerns are the effects on American jobs, wages, income distribution, trade and payments balances, the pace of R&D and innovation, the size of the domestic stock of capital, and the possibility of a global "race for the bottom" in environmental and labor-rights policies. Although most of these concerns are misplaced, such investment does create both winners and losers and thus can give rise to political and public controversy. Therefore, U.S. government policies toward FDI in emerging markets today are ambivalent. While some, including a number of initiatives in the GATT negotiations and the World Trade Organization, are supportive, others, including export controls, the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, and certain types of import restrictions are either hostile to such investment or seek to limit it in various ways.http://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/39639/3/wp254.pd

Political Agency and the Responsibility Paradox: Multinationals and Corporate Social Responsibility

http://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/78164/1/ipc-107-davis-whitman-zald-political-agency-responsibility-paradox-multinationals-corporate-social-responsibility.pd

The Responsibility Paradox: Multinational Firms and Global Corporate Social Responsibility

This paper examines the impact of multinational firms' increasingly blurred geographical and institutional boundaries on the nature and definition of Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR). It begins with a brief history of CSR, describes changes in the global corporation and the pressures impinging on it over the past 25 years, and analyzes the resulting mismatch between the contemporary corporation and traditional concepts of CSR. It then dissects some of the issues raised by this new concept of CSR, and speculates on future trajectories for CSR in multinational corporations as globalization continues to exert pressure for convergence of such standards into a more universal definition of Global CSR.http://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/21613/1/IPC-working-paper-004-whitmanDavisZald.pd

Promoting remyelination through cell transplantation therapies in a model of viral-induced neurodegenerative disease.

Multiple sclerosis (MS) is a central nervous system (CNS) disease characterized by chronic neuroinflammation, demyelination, and axonal damage. Infiltration of activated lymphocytes and myeloid cells are thought to be primarily responsible for white matter damage and axonopathy. Several United States Food and Drug Administration-approved therapies exist that impede activated lymphocytes from entering the CNS thereby limiting new lesion formation in patients with relapse-remitting forms of MS. However, a significant challenge within the field of MS research is to develop effective and sustained therapies that allow for axonal protection and remyelination. In recent years, there has been increasing evidence that some kinds of stem cells and their derivatives seem to be able to mute neuroinflammation as well as promote remyelination and axonal integrity. Intracranial infection of mice with the neurotropic JHM strain of mouse hepatitis virus (JHMV) results in immune-mediated demyelination and axonopathy, making this an excellent model to interrogate the therapeutic potential of stem cell derivatives in evoking remyelination. This review provides a succinct overview of our recent findings using intraspinal injection of mouse CNS neural progenitor cells and human neural precursors into JHMV-infected mice. JHMV-infected mice receiving these cells display extensive remyelination associated with axonal sparing. In addition, we discuss possible mechanisms associated with sustained clinical recovery. Developmental Dynamics 248:43-52, 2019. © 2018 Wiley Periodicals, Inc

A genomic catalog of Earth’s microbiomes

The reconstruction of bacterial and archaeal genomes from shotgun metagenomes has enabled insights into the ecology and evolution of environmental and host-associated microbiomes. Here we applied this approach to >10,000 metagenomes collected from diverse habitats covering all of Earth’s continents and oceans, including metagenomes from human and animal hosts, engineered environments, and natural and agricultural soils, to capture extant microbial, metabolic and functional potential. This comprehensive catalog includes 52,515 metagenome-assembled genomes representing 12,556 novel candidate species-level operational taxonomic units spanning 135 phyla. The catalog expands the known phylogenetic diversity of bacteria and archaea by 44% and is broadly available for streamlined comparative analyses, interactive exploration, metabolic modeling and bulk download. We demonstrate the utility of this collection for understanding secondary-metabolite biosynthetic potential and for resolving thousands of new host linkages to uncultivated viruses. This resource underscores the value of genome-centric approaches for revealing genomic properties of uncultivated microorganisms that affect ecosystem processes

The Eastern Dimension of the European Neighbourhood Policy: practices, instruments and social structures

The European Union (EU) continuingly searches for more effective policy towards its eastern neighbours, which is reflected in the ongoing adaptation of its existing approaches, discourses and policy strategies to the new challenges of its external environment. In order to understand the complexity and limitations of the EU framework under the European neighbourhood policy and the eastern partnership initiative – that is, to consider the interface between policy instruments, institutional structures and multiple agents – one needs to adopt an original analytical perspective of practices to comprehensively assess the policies' outcomes. With this in mind, this issue sets to discern patterns of social practices between the EU and its eastern neighbours, and examine how these relations guide agents' interactions in various policy areas. This introduction outlines the theoretical framework synergising the three fundamental concepts – of practices, policy instruments and social structures – that have predicated research for this issue. It also outlines the structure and main arguments of the individual case-studies which inform the issue's conceptual framework