It is well established that connections to government officials confer important benefits to firms. However, past work has ignored the crucial role that ties to other firms in the same industry (peer ties) also play in facilitating firms' political participation. We develop new theory that...

By December 31, 2015, the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) has committed to complete the formation of the ASEAN Economic Community (AEC), a plan that was adopted back in 2007. As countries across ASEAN seek to seize the development opportunities associated with the AEC, it is...

Bureaucratic reform is a priority of donor organizations, including the World Bank, but is notoriously difficult to implement. In many countries, politicians have little interest in the basic financial and personnel management systems that are essential to political oversight of bureaucratic...

A causal relationship between diaspora populations and bilateral foreign direct investment has been established empirically, but the causal mechanism driving this relationship remains unclear. Do diaspora-owned foreign firms enjoy a competitive advantage in the homeland, and if so, what accounts...

This paper analyzes an understudied and contested form of sovereign theft, transfer restriction, which has supplanted expropriation as the most ubiquitous and costly type of international property rights violation. Veto-player-type constraints curtail governments' ability to engage in outright...