This paper empirically analyses the effect of foreign block acquisitions on the U.S. target firms' credit risk as captured by their CDS. The involvement of foreign investors leads to a significant increase in the target firms' CDS spreads. This effect is stronger when foreign owners are...

China’s lending boom to developing countries is morphing into defaults and debt distress. Given the secrecy surrounding China’s loans, also the associated defaults remain “hidden”, as missed payments and restructuring details are not disclosed. We construct an encompassing dataset of...

We analyze the role of political instability for the composition of foreign investment, whether it takes the form of a majority- or minority-owned investment. We focus on the instability generated by the change of the party in power rather than on the risk of changes of political regime or...

The emergence of Sovereign Wealth Funds (SWFs) and some spectacular investments of these funds in recent years have caused widespread attention on international financial markets. Most SWFs are domiciled in Arabian countries, East Asia and Russia. Their low transparency led to concerns that SWFs...

Using a comprehensive and proprietary dataset on international private equity activity, we study the determinants of buyout investments across 61 countries and 19 industries over the period of 1990-2017. We find evidence that macroeconomic conditions, development of stock and credit markets, and...

We study the impact of government expropriation risk on the terms of cross-border syndicated loans. By comparing loans by foreign lenders from countries covered by bilateral investment treaties (BITs) to loans from non-covered countries, we isolate and quantify the impact of strengthening...

This paper analyzes the impact of bilateral investment treaties (BITs) on sovereign bond returns of 25 emerging markets from 1993 to 2016. Under a BIT, foreign investors can use an international arbitration scheme to enforce compensation claims against the domestic government in case of direct...

This paper examines the influence of political risk guarantees of bilateral investment treaties on debt and equity flows using panel data on middle income countries for the period 1984-2011. Adopting system GMM methodology, the paper empirically finds that ratified bilateral investment treaties...

This paper examines the relationship between sovereign credit ratings and FDI flows from 31 OECD donor countries to 72 recipient (OECD and non-OECD) countries over the period of 1985-2012. There are three main findings in the paper. First, sovereign credit ratings of donor and recipient are...