We analyze how China's emergence as a destination for foreign direct investment is affecting the ability of other countries to attract FDI. We do so using an approach that accounts for the endogeneity of China's FDI. The impact turns out to vary by region. China's rapid growth and attractions as...

Brazil, Mexico and a few other Latin American republics enjoyed faster industrialization after 1870 than did the rest of Latin America and even faster than the rest of the poor periphery (except East Asia). How much of this economic performance was due to more accommodating institutions and...

While the old systems competition took place with closed borders, globalisation has brought about a new type of systems competition that is driven by the mobility of factors of production. The new systems competition will likely imply the erosion of the European welfare state, induce a race to...

We study the role of exchange rates in industrial policy. We construct an open-economy macroeconomic framework with production externalities and show that the desirability of these policies critically depends on the dynamic patterns of externalities. When they are stronger in earlier stages of...

I examine the role of political instability as a potential explanation for the lack of capital flows from rich countries to poor countries (i.e. the `Lucas Paradox'). Using panel data from 1984 to 2014, I document the following: (i) developed countries exhibit larger inflows of foreign direct...

I analyze how partisan conflict about trade policy affects foreign direct investment flows to the US using a novel indicator, the Trade Partisan Conflict Index (TPCI). Partisan conflict is relevant for the evolution of cross-border capital flows because the expected returns on investment...

This paper studies how innovation reacts to foreign political risk and shapes its economic consequences. In a model with foreign political shocks that can disrupt the supply of foreign inputs, we show that greater political risk abroad increases domestic innovation, thereby lowering reliance on...

Unilateral tariff liberalisation by developing nations is pervasive but our understanding of it is shallow. This paper strives to partly redress this lacuna on the theory side by introducing three novel political economy mechanisms with particular emphasis is on the role of production...

This paper brings out the special mechanism through which taxes influence bilateral FDI, when investment decisions are two-fold in the presence of fixed setup flows costs. For each pair of source-host countries, there is a set of factors determining whether aggregate FDI flows will occur at all,...

This essay highlights the effects of radical transformations in the liberal characteristics of the regimes on foreign direct investors. To focus on the common patterns in the effects on foreign direct investment, of liberal vs. illiberal regime change, the essay spotlights the tale of two...