Foreign Investment Transactions Research Articles

Relevance of nationality in cross-border economic transactions

How relevant is nationality in global economic behavior? The aim of this paper is to scrutinize the relevance of nationality affiliations and nationality conceptions in cross-border economic transactions, using the case of foreign investment exchanges. In particular, I examine how nationality affiliations may shape the types of commitments that actors will want to realize through foreign investment transactions, and how nationality categorizations influence the evaluation of potential partners in economic transactions. I also stipulate when nationality affiliations and categorizations play a more- or less-salient role. To develop these propositions I use illustrations from cases of foreign investment attempts in which investors from the West try to acquire firms in post-socialist Slovenia. The analysis is grounded in economic sociology and advances a relational understanding of nationality, seen as interpretive codes embedded in actors’ cultural repertoires, situationally invoked, and made relevant (or not) in interactions.

Canada: Still Open for Business? PotashCorp and the Investment Canada Act

In three recent foreign investment review decisions, the Canadian Minister of Industry has either blocked or sought to impose post-closing sanctions on mergers and acquisitions of Canadian target companies. These decisions remind antitrust practitioners that, in some countries, foreign investment may be submitted to scrutiny beyond traditional merger control. This article analyses the situation in Canada, critically assessing the approach used by authorities in their review of foreign investment transactions. Notwithstanding recent events, the article concludes that Canada remains open for business, with increasingly open policies and ongoing recognition of the importance of encouraging foreign investment.

Revisiting the BOT Structure in Direct Foreign Investment Transactions

Revisiting the BOT Structure in Direct Foreign Investment Transactions

State Investment Promotion & Foreign Investment in the US

The individual states within the United States offer numerous incentives to entice international investment even though the effectiveness of doing so is unclear. Examining their effectiveness, we find that coastal states that offer more incentives do receive a greater annual share of foreign investment transactions into the US. As a second step, we consider what leads states to offer more or less incentives and find that states behave differently depending upon whether or not they are economically advantaged. Those that are advantaged offer fewer incentives, while those that are disadvantaged choose to offer more. For disadvantaged states, offering more incentives only partially offsets their lower attractiveness suggesting the limited effectiveness of investment promotion.

Negotiating Global, Regional, and National Forces: Foreign Investment in Slovenia

The article examines foreign investment in Slovenia to study the interplay between global investment flows, pressures from regional associations, and national protectionist efforts and resistance to foreign ownership. Using content analysis of policies and parliamentary debates, the author investigates how the newly established Slovenian state institutionalizes its attitudes toward the participation of foreigners in the national economy in the official policies adopted to regulate foreign investment. With case studies of foreign investment transactions, the author illustrates how foreign investment occurs in practice. The author finds that the Slovenian state officials negotiate the domestic and European Union pressures by sanctioning the decoupling between formal policies and economic practice. At the organizational level, economic actors involved in transactions negotiate the global and local interests by exploiting institutional nontransparency and differentiating between transaction partners on the basis of preexistent social relations and cultural affinities. Paying attention to the intersection between global, regional, and national forces, this study uncovers the social, cultural, and political bases of economic processes and the agency of local actors in responding to global and regional pressures.

Particularizing the Global: Reception of Foreign Direct Investment in Slovenia

Exploring the relationship between global forces and local practices, this article examines the reception of global investment flows in an East European transition country, Slovenia. Using content analysis of legal regulations and policies, the article investigates how global pressures impact the official foreign investment policy regime in Slovenia. Examples of foreign investment transactions illustrate economic practice. The analysis shows that yielding to the universalizing pressures of neoliberalism creates convergence in official foreign investment policies. In practice, however, economic actors involved in foreign investment transactions resist and particularize global processes on the basis of their network ties, political alliances and cultural affinities. Overall, the study emphasizes the social and political embeddedness of economic processes and substantiates how the decoupling of formal policies and local practices sustains the coexistence of uniformity and diversity.

Some Aspects of the International Trade in Services: An Empirical Approach

In this article, an attempt is made to achieve as complete an approach as possible to the phenomenon of international trade in services, which can take on different forms. The article starts with a description of cross-border services transactions as recorded in the balance of payments statistics. This is followed by a closer look at foreign investment transactions in the services sector. Finally, the importance of those services which are incorporated into the trade in goods is gauged. The basic method used is that of international comparisons, but where these are impossible owing to a lack of statistical material, the specific situation of Belgium and Luxembourg is examined.