The same characteristics that determine the ability of firms to profitably engage international markets also influence their policy interests and the ways in which they can or cannot participate in the policy-making process.
Multilevel Determinants of MNC Corruption Risk (with Juliane Markscheffel). Journal of International Business Policy, 2021.
MNCs’ home country institutions and regulations, along with characteristics of the industries in which they operate, influence their organizational and reporting structures, leading to variations in their anti-corruption performance.
Disentangling Foreign Direct Investments. World Economics Journal, 2019.
I discuss issues with aggregated FDI data that can lead to biased inferences in research and sub-optimal policy outcomes.
Firm Heterogeneity and Trade-Policy Stances. Business and Politics 19(1):1-40. 2017.
Firm-level trade-policy stances are driven by productivity. Highly productive producers are more likely to favor open trade than their unproductive counterparts, while a large portion of firms, unrelated to productivity level, does not hold clear trade-policy stances.
Liberalization for Sale. 2017.
The costs to lobbying are high, and lobbying on trade policy is most often undertaken by internationally engaged producers. Consequently, in contrast with conventional political-economy models, firms are likely to be lobbying for trade liberalization, not increased trade protection.
Firms and Policy Preferences. Oxford Handbook on the Political Economy of International Trade, edited by Lisa Martin. 196-212. 2015.
Producers and the Political Economy of the Smoot-Hawley Tariff. 2015.
While international trade and investment have flourished since the end of WWII, intra-industry divisions over trade policy precede the post-war wave of liberalization. I identify these split trade-policy demands in congressional testimony over the Smoot-Hawley Tariff, complementing the seminal industry-based descriptions of 1929’s protectionist demands.
Firms & Foreign Markets: Internationalization Strategies and Stances on Foreign Economic Policies. 2011.
Heterogeneity in both firm characteristics and market behaviors can explain patterns in stances over a range of foreign economic policy issues. [The hosted version is a very early draft.]
The Effectiveness of Monetary Policy Anchors: Firm-Level Evidence (with J Lawrence Broz). International Organization 64(4). 2010.
Transparency among monetary-policy mechanisms significantly influences private-sector inflation expectations.