Expropriation of the expropriators

The Expropriation of Environmental Governance

What do a Canadian ban on the exportation of hazardous wastes, California's remediation requirements for open-pit mines, and the Municipality of Lima's closure of a pasta factory have in common? They are all government measures that have been the subject of investor-state disputes resolved in international investment arbitration. The ability of foreign investors, as private actors in global pol...

The Expropriation of Environmental Governance

Expropriation Dynamics

Many emerging market economies oscillate between periods of high and low growth (see Aguiar and Gopinath, 2007). These changes in growth regimes generate business cycles that are markedly different from the ones observed in developed countries: consumption and investment are volatile relative to output, and net exports are strongly counter-cyclical. This volatility is often accompanied by sharp...

Expropriation of Foreign Direct Investment

Stylized evidence indicates that democracies and autocracies both expropriate foreign direct investment but that democracies do so less frequently. What explains the similarities and differences in expropriation between regime types? An analysis of actual expropriation acts in 63 developing countries from 1960 to 1990 shows that democracies are most likely to expropriate foreign investment when...

Growth in the Shadow of Expropriation∗

In this paper, we address two questions: (i) Why do developing countries with the highest growth rates export capital; and (ii) Why are some countries unable or unwilling to pursue the high growth/low debt strategies that has proven successful for many “miracle” economies. The model we study is a small open economy subject to political economy and contracting frictions. The political economy fr...