Systemofacture, Investment Location and Off-Shore Sourcing

Driving Force ◽  
2019 ◽  
pp. 285-327
Author(s):  
Kurt Hoffman ◽  
Raphael Kaplinsky
Keyword(s):  
Author(s):  
Trung A Dang ◽  
Randall W Stone

Abstract We find firm-level evidence that US banks receive preferential treatment in countries under IMF conditionality. We rely on investment location decisions to infer firms’ expectations about future profits and find that US firms are approximately 53 percent more likely to acquire financial firms in countries under financial conditionality. IMF programs without financial conditionality and FDI in other sectors serve as placebo tests. Financial conditionality has weak effects on investment decisions by non-US firms, which implies a political-economy interpretation. Firm-level data indicate that the distinctive behavior of US firms is not due to advantages of scale or to a US-firm fixed effect, but to US influence in the IMF. Firms from other major IMF shareholders benefit as well, but the effects are much weaker. The effects are concentrated in the politically relevant firms that have local affiliates, which is consistent with the interpretation that firms lobby for preferential treatment.


AMBIO ◽  
2022 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dilini Abeygunawardane ◽  
Angela Kronenburg García ◽  
Zhanli Sun ◽  
Daniel Müller ◽  
Almeida Sitoe ◽  
...  

AbstractActor-level data on large-scale commercial agriculture in Sub-Saharan Africa are scarce. The peculiar choice of transnational investing in African land has, therefore, been subject to conjecture. Addressing this gap, we reconstructed the underlying logics of investment location choices in a Bayesian network, using firm- and actor-level interview and spatial data from 37 transnational agriculture and forestry investments across 121 sites in Mozambique, Zambia, Tanzania, and Ethiopia. We distinguish four investment locations across gradients of resource frontiers and agglomeration economies to derive the preferred locations of different investors with varied skillsets and market reach (i.e., track record). In contrast to newcomers, investors with extensive track records are more likely to expand the land use frontier, but they are also likely to survive the high transaction costs of the pre-commercial frontier. We highlight key comparative advantages of Southern and Eastern African frontiers and map the most probable categories of investment locations.


2019 ◽  
Vol 284 ◽  
pp. 08008 ◽  
Author(s):  
Aleksander Robak ◽  
Michał Pieńko ◽  
Ewa Błazik-Borowa ◽  
Jarosław Bęc ◽  
Iwona Szer

The analyzes and classifications presented in the article were based on the research carried out in the years 2016 to 2018 on a group of over one hundred scaffoldings assembled and used on construction sites in different parts of Poland. During scaffolding selection process efforts were made to maintain diversification in terms of parameters such as scaffolding size, investment size, type of investment, location and nature of conducted 5works. This resulted in the research being carried out on scaffoldings used for church renovation in a small town or attached to the facades of classic apartment blocks, as well as on scaffoldings used during construction of skyscrapers or facilities of the largest power plants. This variety allows to formulate general conclusions about the technical condition of used frame scaffoldings. Exploitation damages of the frame scaffolding elements were divided into three groups. The first group includes damages to the main structural components, which reduce the strength of the scaffolding elements and hence the whole structure. The qualitative analysis of these damages was made based on numerical models that take into account the geometry of the damage and based on computational nonlinear static analyzes. The second group focuses on exploitation damages such as the lack of a pin on the guardrail bolt which may cause an imminent threat to people using scaffolding. These are local damages that do not affect the bearing capacity and stability of the whole structure but are very important for safe use. The last group consider damages that reduce only aesthetic values and do not have direct impact on bearing capacity and safety of use. Apart from qualitative analyzes the article will present quantitative analyzes showing how frequently given type of damage occurs.


2020 ◽  
Vol 52 (8) ◽  
pp. 1681-1699
Author(s):  
Jonathan Jones ◽  
Ilona Serwicka ◽  
Colin Wren

European Union (EU) enlargement of the mid-2000s is likely to have changed the motives for foreign direct investment (FDI) location between the existing Member States (the EU15) and the new entrants of Central and Eastern Europe (CEECs), but it is poorly understood. This paper uses the framework of Dunning’s eclectic paradigm and data for 35,105 foreign investments in Europe not only to examine if the motives differ between these, but also how they are affected by the enlargement. Three asset-exploiting motives of market, resource and efficiency seeking are explored using a conditional logit model for the location choice. This is separately for greenfield and brownfield FDI, involving new facilities or jobs, where the latter is efficiency seeking from an expansion or a co-location of functions. The paper finds greenfield FDI in the CEECs seeks an export platform for the EU market and a low-skilled workforce but a national market and higher skills in the EU15. Brownfield FDI differs from this for expansions only, for which the EU market is important, reflecting scale economies. Surprisingly, EU enlargement has a much stronger effect on the FDI location motives in the EU15 by increasing the importance of the European market, which is possibly because the CEEC liberalisation was ongoing throughout the accession process. The paper finds evidence that the differences in the motives between the CEECs and EU15 are narrowing over time, but they are pronounced, and it is argued that they will persist.


Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document