This paper investigates the effects of multinational corporations on labor standards. We argue that the previous literature has failed to distinguish the different motives that encourage firms to become multinational. Therefore, we build a stylized model of segmented labor markets with...

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...

Does international investor sentiment improve when a crises-ridden country participates in an IMF program? I argue that merely participating in an IMF program may not revive the sentiments of investors. Rather, investor sentiment would improve when governments enhance the credibility of their...

Do countries compete for FDI by liberalizing policies favoring FDI? Our measure of policies favoring FDI is an event count of changes made by a country in a given year in the arena of approval procedures, sectoral restrictions, operational conditions, incentives, investment guarantees, foreign...

About 90 countries have adopted Freedom of Information (FOI) laws with the objective of facilitating citizens' right to access information on government activities expeditiously. It is argued that FOI laws increase transparency and fix accountability of the government. We provide quantitative...

The Anti-trafficking Protocol reflects the interests of the major powers. Due to the high costs of compliance, countries will strategically select certain obligations, which will satisfy the major powers most efficiently with lower costs of compliance. Among the three main obligations of the...

It is a commonly held view that democracy is better at safeguarding environment while autocracy is predatory in nature, and is thus insensitive towards environment. However, others argue that democracy leads to environmental degradation. We revisit this contentious relationship between regime...

We empirically assess the determinants of India's FDI outflows across a large sample of host countries in the 1996-2009 period. Based on gravity model specifications, we employ Poisson pseudo maximum likelihood (PPML) estimators. Major findings include: India's outward FDI is hardly affected by...