Political Risk, Economic Integration, and the Foreign Direct Investment Decision

In this paper we analyse the impact of policy uncertainty on foreign direct investment strategies. We also consider the impact of economic integration upon FDI decisions. The paper follows the real options approach, which allows investigating the value to a firm of waiting to invest and/or disinvest, when payoffs are stochastic due to political uncertainty and investments are partially reversible. Across the board we find that political uncertainty can be very detrimental to FDI decisions while economic integration leads to an increasing benefit of investing abroad.

Public Governance, Health and Foreign Direct Investment in Sub-Saharan Africa

In this paper we diverge from the existing empirical literature on FDI determinants in two ways. First, we decompose the sources of the foreign direct investment (FDI) gap between Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) and other developing regions. Once market size has been accounted for, we nd that SSA's FDI de cit is mostly explained by insufficient provision of public goods: low human capital accumulation, especially health, in SSA explains 100-140% of the inter-regional FDI gaps. Second, we estimate the indirect effect of infectious diseases on FDI through their direct impact on health. We find that a 1% point rise in HIV prevalence in the adult population is associated with a decrease in net FDI inflows of 3.5%, while a country in which 100% of the population is at risk of contracting deadly malaria receives about 16% less FDI than a similar country located in a malaria-free region.

Do Institutions Matter for Foreign Direct Investment?

In this paper the role of institutions in determining foreign direct investment (FDI) is investigated using a large panel of 107 countries during 1981 and 2005. We find that institutions are a robust predictor of FDI and that the most significant institutional aspects are linked to propriety rights, the rule of law and expropriation risk. Using a novel data set, we also study the impact of institutions on FDI at the sectoral level. We find that institutions do not have a significant impact on FDI in the primary sector but that institutional quality matters for FDI in manufacturing and particularly in services. We also provide policy implications for institutional reform.

Climbing to the top? Foreign Direct Investment and Property Rights.

This paper operates at the interface of the literature on the impact of foreign direct investment (FDI) on host countries, and the literature on the determinants of institutional quality. We argue that FDI contributes to economic development by improving institutional quality in the host country and we attempt to test this proposition using a large panel data set of 70 developing countries during the period 1981 and 2005, and we show that FDI inflows have a positive and highly significant impact on property rights. The result appears to be very robust and is and not affected by model specification, different control variables, or a particular estimation technique. As far as we are aware this is the first paper to empirically test the FDI – property rights linkage.

Rebound and disinvestment effects in oil consumption and supply resulting from an increase in energy efficiency in the Scottish commercial transport sector

In this paper we use an energy-economy-environment computable general equilibrium (CGE) model of the Scottish economy to examine the impacts of an exogenous increase in energy augmenting technological progress in the domestic commercial Transport sector on the supply and use of energy. We focus our analysis on oil, as the main type of energy input used in commercial transport activity. We find that a 5% increase in energy efficiency in the commercial Transport sector leads to rebound effects in the use of oil-based energy commodities in all time periods, in the target sector and at the economy-wide level. However, our results also suggest that such an efficiency improvement may cause a contraction in capacity in the Scottish oil supply sector. This ‘disinvestment effect’ acts as a constraint on the size of rebound effects. However, the magnitude of rebound effects and presence of the disinvestment effect in the simulations conducted here are sensitive to the specification of key elasticities of substitution in the nested production function for the target sector, particularly the substitutability of energy for non-energy intermediate inputs to production.

Short-Run Strategies For Attracting Foreign Direct Investment

This paper empirically investigates the effectiveness and feasibility of two FDI policies, fiscal incentives and deregulation, aimed at improving the attractiveness of a country in the short run. Using disaggregated data on sales by US MNEs’ foreign affiliates in 43 developed and developing countries over the 1982-1994 period, results show that the provision of fiscal incentives or the deregulation of the labour market would exert a positive impact on total FDI. Given the drawbacks frequently associated with the use of incentive packages, economy-wide policies which ease firing procedures and reduce severance payments would certainly be the best policy option. This paper also highlights the different aggregation and omitted variable biases that have affected results of previous studies and provides some support to recent theoretical models of FDI by showing that third country effects and spatial interdependence influence respectively the location of export-platform FDI and vertical FDI.

Short-Run Strategies For Attracting Foreign Direct Investment

This paper empirically investigates the effectiveness and feasibility of two FDI policies, fiscal incentives and deregulation, aimed at improving the attractiveness of a country in the short run. Using disaggregated data on sales by US MNEs’ foreign affiliates in 43 developed and developing countries over the 1982-1994 period, results show that the provision of fiscal incentives or the deregulation of the labour market would exert a positive impact on total FDI. Given the drawbacks frequently associated with the use of incentive packages, economy-wide policies which ease firing procedures and reduce severance payments would certainly be the best policy option. This paper also highlights the different aggregation and omitted variable biases that have affected results of previous studies and provides some support to recent theoretical models of FDI by showing that third country effects and spatial interdependence influence respectively the location of export-platform FDI and vertical FDI.

Evaluating sampling strategies and logistic regression methods for modelling complex land cover changes

The role of land cover change as a significant component of global change has become increasingly recognized in recent decades. Large databases measuring land cover change, and the data which can potentially be used to explain the observed changes, are also becoming more commonly available. When developing statistical models to investigate observed changes, it is important to be aware that the chosen sampling strategy and modelling techniques can influence results. We present a comparison of three sampling strategies and two forms of grouped logistic regression models (multinomial and ordinal) in the investigation of patterns of successional change after agricultural land abandonment in Switzerland. Results indicated that both ordinal and nominal transitional change occurs in the landscape and that the use of different sampling regimes and modelling techniques as investigative tools yield different results. Synthesis and applications. Our multimodel inference identified successfully a set of consistently selected indicators of land cover change, which can be used to predict further change, including annual average temperature, the number of already overgrown neighbouring areas of land and distance to historically destructive avalanche sites. This allows for more reliable decision making and planning with respect to landscape management. Although both model approaches gave similar results, ordinal regression yielded more parsimonious models that identified the important predictors of land cover change more efficiently. Thus, this approach is favourable where land cover change pattern can be interpreted as an ordinal process. Otherwise, multinomial logistic regression is a viable alternative.

Matrix-assisted laser desorption ionization-time of flight mass spectrometry for direct bacterial identification from positive blood culture pellets.

An ammonium chloride erythrocyte-lysing procedure was used to prepare a bacterial pellet from positive blood cultures for direct matrix-assisted laser desorption-ionization time of flight (MALDI-TOF) mass spectrometry analysis. Identification was obtained for 78.7% of the pellets tested. Moreover, 99% of the MALDI-TOF identifications were congruent at the species level when considering valid scores. This fast and accurate method is promising.

North Sea Oil and Genuine Saving in the Scottish Economy

The World Bank has published estimates of sustainability of consumption paths by adjusting saving rates to take account of the depletion of non-renewable resources. During the period of North Sea oil production Scotland has been in a fiscal union with the rest of the UK. The present paper adjusts the World Bank data to produce separate genuine saving estimates for Scotland and the rest of the UK for 1970-2009, based on a ‘derivation’ principle for oil revenues. The calculations indicate that Scotland has had a negative genuine saving rate for most of the period of exploitation of North Sea oil resources, with genuine saving being positive in the rest of the UK during this period.

Evidence against a direct role of klotho in insulin resistance.

The klotho gene may be involved in the aging process. Klotho is a coactivator of FGF23, a regulator of phosphate and vitamin D metabolism. It has also been reported to be downregulated in insulin resistance syndromes and paradoxically to directly inhibit IGF-1 and insulin signaling. Our aim was to study klotho's regulation and effects on insulin and IGF-1 signaling to unravel this paradox. We studied klotho tissue distribution and expression by quantitative real-time polymerase chain reaction and Western blotting in obese Zucker rats and high-fat fed Wistar rats, two models of insulin resistance. Klotho was expressed in kidneys but at much lower levels (<1.5%) in liver, muscle, brain, and adipose tissue. There were no significant differences between insulin resistant and control animals. We next produced human recombinant soluble klotho protein (KLEC) and studied its effects on insulin and IGF-1 signaling in cultured cells. In HEK293 cells, FGF23 signaling (judged by FRS2-alpha and ERK1/2 phosphorylation) was activated by conditioned media from KLEC-producing cells (CM-KLEC); however, IGF-1 signaling was unaffected. CM-KLEC did not inhibit IGF-1 and insulin signaling in L6 and Hep G2 cells, as judged by Akt and ERK1/2 phosphorylation. We conclude that decreased klotho expression is not a general feature of rodent models of insulin resistance. Further, the soluble klotho protein does not inhibit IGF-1 and/or insulin signaling in HEK293, L6, and HepG2 cells, arguing against a direct role of klotho in insulin signaling. However, the hypothesis that klotho indirectly regulates insulin sensitivity via FGF23 activation remains to be investigated.

North Sea Oil and Genuine Saving in the Scottish Economy

The World Bank has published estimates of sustainability of consumption paths by adjusting saving rates to take account of the depletion of non-renewable resources. During the period of North Sea oil production Scotland has been in a fiscal union with the rest of the UK. The present paper adjusts the World Bank data to produce separate genuine saving estimates for Scotland and the rest of the UK for 1970-2009, based on a ‘derivation’ principle for oil revenues. The calculations indicate that Scotland has had a negative genuine saving rate for most of the period of exploitation of North Sea oil resources, with genuine saving being positive in the rest of the UK during this period.

Problèmes d'échantillonnage lors d'une enquête sur la plombémie d'enfants citadin [Sampling problems in a survey of blood lead levels in city children].

A study on lead pollution was carried out on a sample of ca. 300 city children. This paper presents the errors producing bias in the sample. It is emphasized that, in Switzerland, the difference between the Swiss and the migrant population (the latter being mainly Italian and Spanish) must be taken into account.