Corporate coalitions and policy making in the European Union:how and why British American tobacco promoted "better regulation"

Over the past fifteen years, an interconnected set of regulatory reforms, knownas Better Regulation, has been adopted across Europe, marking a significant shift in theway that European Union policies are developed. There has been little exploration of the origins of these reforms, which include mandatory ex ante impact assessment. Drawing on documentary and interview data, this article discusses how and why large corporations, notably British American Tobacco (BAT), worked to influence and promote these reforms. Our analysis highlights (1) howpolicy entrepreneurs with sufficient resources (such as large corporations) can shape the membership and direction of advocacy coalitions; (2) the extent to which "think tanks" may be prepared to lobby on behalf of commercial clients; and (3) why regulated industries (including tobacco) may favor the use of "evidence tools," such as impact assessments, in policy making. We argue that a key aspect of BAT's ability to shape regulatory reform involved the deliberate construction of a vaguely defined idea that could be strategically adapted to appeal to diverse constituencies.We discuss the theoretical implications of this finding for the Advocacy Coalition Framework, as well as the practical implications of the findings for efforts to promote transparency and public health in the European Union.

Economic reforms as a tool to attract foreign direct investment:is it a chimera?

The policy implication of the existing literature on foreign direct investment (FDI) inflows is that countries that require FDI can attract it by adopting policy measures that facilitate the emergence of appropriate regulatory and institutional environment, greater integration with the global economy and the development of resources like human capital. We test the plausible hypothesis that, on the contrary, FDI flows are largely path dependent, and our empirical exercise finds prima facie support in favour of this hypothesis. This has obvious implications for FDI flows to poor countries.

Reforms and entry:some evidence from the Indian manufacturing sector

Traditional research in the context of product market entry has explored the strategic reactions of incumbent firms when threatened by the possibility of entry, and have identified industry-specific factors that affect entry rates. However, following de Soto (1989), there has been increasing emphasis on regulatory and institutional factors governing entry rates, especially in the context of developing countries. Using three-digit industry-level data from India, for the 1984–97 period, we examine the phenomenon of entry in the Indian context. Our empirical results suggest that during the 1980s industry-level factors largely explained variations in entry rates, but that, following the economic federalism brought about by the post-1991 reforms, variations in entry rates during the 1990s were explained largely by state-level institutional and legacy factors. Past productivity growth affects net entry rates as well.