Among the many concerns over globalization is that as nations compete for mobile firms, they will relax labour standards as a method of lowering costs and attracting investment. Using spatial estimation on panel data for 148 developing countries over 18 years, we find that the labour standards...

This paper examines the effect that a country's business regulatory environment has on the amount of foreign direct investment it attracts. We use the World Bank's Ease of Doing Business ranking to capture the costs that firms face when operating in a country. Several interesting results emerge....