Is investment constrained more by insecure property rights or by limited external finance? For five transition economies in Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union we find that weak property rights limit the reinvestment of profits in startup ma nufacturing firms. Access to credit does not...

We quantify the impact of barriers to international investment, using a novel multi-country dynamic general equilibrium model with heterogeneous investors and imperfect capital mobility. Our model yields a gravity equation for bilateral foreign asset positions. We estimate this gravity equation...

This paper scrutinizes the effects of investor-state dispute settlements (ISDS) and national treatment provisions in a two-period model where foreign investment is subject to domestic regulation and a holdup problem. It shows that ISDS can mitigate the holdup problem and increases aggregate...

We study the role of competition for the hold-up problem in foreign direct investment in resource-based industries. The host country government is not only unable to commit not to expropriate investment ex post, but is also unable to commit to the provision of local resources. In the case of...

We look at the tax burden on direct investment from three perspectives. The first section illustrates how the recognition of company tax planning and of the importance of intellectual property affects measures of effective tax rates. It also discusses the methodological issues that arise, such...

Prefunding of pension commitments in OECD economies is increasingly seen as a central strategy to cope with the aging of their populations. This paper argues that investments in emerging markets can help at the margin but are unable to solve the demographic problem. While these investments bring...

Multinational enterprises are often accused to have a preference for investing in countries in which the working populations' civil and political rights are largely disregarded. This paper presents an empirical investigation of the popular political repression boosts FDI hypothesis and arrives...

This chapter provides a survey of issues which emerge with the taxation of multinational enterprises. It addresses tax rates which affect multinational firms directly and focuses on provisions and incentives which relate to the profits and investments of such firms directly. It survey positive...

Legal conflicts between multinational firms and host governments are often decided by international arbitration panels - as opposed to courts in the host country - due to provisions in international investment agreements known as Investor State Dispute Settlements (ISDS). Critics fear that ISDS...

The investment-intensive growth model of the People's Republic of China (PRC) is often viewed as state-driven and ultimately unsustainable. But largely unnoticed, a shift has taken place. This paper examines the changes in investment patterns since 2003 and the potential impact of industrial...