This essay addresses the recent deceleration in the pace of global FDI and asks whether multinational corporations are actually in retreat. It identifies the forces that are slowing the expansion of FDI, and sketches the role that multinational corporations will play in the future.

This essay addresses the recent deceleration in the pace of global FDI and asks whether multinational corporations are actually in retreat. It identifies the forces that are slowing the expansion of FDI, and sketches the role that multinational corporations will play in the future.

On April 2, 2025, President Donald Trump announced a wide-ranging set of "reciprocal tariffs" against many of its trading partners. The calculation of these tariffs have elicited a largely negative reaction in part due to the simple formula used to calculate them. In this note, I provide a model...

This paper examines the extent to which foreign direct investment (FDI) affects child labor. Using 1995 data for 145 countries, we find that, contrary to common fears, FDI is negatively correlated with child labor. This effect, however, disappears when controlling for per capita income. After...

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...

Foreign direct investment (FDI) in services has grown significantly in recent years. Evidence of spatial relationships in FDI decisions have been provided for goods manufacturing by utilizing physical distance-based measures of trade costs. This paper investigates spatial interactions for...