The role played by Multinational Enterprises (MNEs) in the global economy is becoming increasingly relevant as they shape sectorial, regional and national trajectories of economic development through their cross-border activities and behaviour. This thesis investigates how the characteristics of MNEs, their activities and location-specific attributes interact with each other and shape both behaviour and choices of MNEs and the impact of foreign direct investment (FDI). The thesis is structured into a general Introduction, aimed at guiding the reader throughout the thesis and providing a broad conceptual framework, and three analytical Parts focusing on (i) MNE greenfield investment location strategies, (ii) MNE selection decisions in cross-border acquisitions and (iii) impact of MNE operations on host regions. In Part I, the location behaviour of MNEs, in the light of the specificities of the recipient economies, is carefully analysed. In particular, the three Chapters of Part I investigate the location behaviour of European MNEs in a set of European Union (EU) neighbouring countries over the period 2003-2008, by focusing on different aspects of location strategies. In Chapter 1, an initial descriptive analysis is produced in order to account for the general determinants of MNE location behaviour. This chapter, therefore, offers a quantitative assessment of the main drivers of FDI in the EU neighbourhood and it also explores sectorial and functional dynamics. Chapter 2 deepens the study of MNE location behaviour by developing both a quantitative and a qualitative analysis of FDI determinants based on the experience of Italian MNEs operating in the EU neighbourhood. This mixed-methods approach allows integrating the general insights emerging from the analysis of the broad group of Italian investors with the in-depth case studies of two specific large Italian MNEs with a strong presence in EU neighbouring countries in recent years. Subsequently, in Chapter 3, particular attention is devoted to the empirical analysis of the spatial distribution of MNE activities in relation to differences in terms of economic institutions of the host locations. This specific line of research is based on an innovative quantitative approach to the study of MNE location strategies in terms of greenfield FDI in the sample of neighbouring countries of the EU. In particular, Chapter 3 focuses on the heterogeneous location strategies of MNEs with respect to location attributes. Overall, the main findings of Part I of the thesis not only suggest that the traditional drivers of FDI emphasised in the existing literature, such as market access and cost-saving factors, still represent relevant elements for MNE behaviour, but it is also highlighted that MNE specificities are crucial to understand investment choices and that industry-wide differences can influence both entry modes and the location decisions of MNEs. The most innovative contribution of Part I, however, is related to Chapter 3, where the quantitative analysis of MNE location behaviour by means of Mixed Logit models suggests that MNEs have heterogeneous preferences with respect to location characteristics, especially economic institutions. This indicates that MNE strategies are highly diverse and the previous quantitative literature may have underestimated the complexity of the interaction between MNEs characteristics and location attributes. After exploring the determinants of MNE location strategies, Part II of the thesis aims at studying the selection decisions of MNEs engaging in cross-border acquisitions. This represents a very novel area of enquiry and the objective of Chapter 4 is to quantitatively assess the relevance of target firms’ attributes in shaping MNE acquisition choices in the framework of their international organisation of production. In particular, the aim of this Chapter is to assess whether acquisition decisions are associated to the search of strategic assets or to market access considerations. Results suggest that, in the sample of EU15 firms under analysis in the period 1997-2013, the latter motivation tends to be more relevant. This is in line with market access motives operating at the firm level, differently from other studies on FDI and acquisitions focusing on the industry- or country-wide level of analysis. Evidence in favour of strategic-asset seeking strategies of MNEs acquiring European firms, instead, remains weak. Therefore, this Chapter highlights that domestic firms engaging in the generation of successful business linkages within or across national markets can represent a valuable target for MNE cross-border acquisition decisions. Finally, building on the previous sections on the determinants of location choices and selection patterns in cross-border takeovers, Part III of the thesis focuses on the impact of FDI on recipient areas in terms of their innovation potential. Chapter 5 is developed as a quantitative analysis with the specific objective of isolating the causal effect of MNE operations on the innovative performance of host regions. This is investigated by employing NUTS-3 level data on Italy for the period 2001-2006. The empirical analysis is supported by the implementation of an Instrumental Variable (IV) strategy in order to tackle potential endogeneity bias in the estimation of FDI-induced spillovers. This Chapter contributes to the existing debate by focusing on the geographical level of FDI externalities, whereas the great majority of past studies mainly investigate industry-wide effects. Results suggest that the presence of FDI in a location contributes to fostering the innovative performance of the local economy. Therefore, MNEs can be seen as carriers of superior knowledge and new organisational practices that spill over space to the benefit of domestic firms. In a policy-making perspective, this provides a clear rationale for the attraction of FDI as an international channel for knowledge sourcing. The three Parts of the thesis are strongly complementary as the strategies of MNEs in Part I and II in terms of FDI (i.e. greenfield and acquisitions) are integrated with an assessment of the impact that corporate activities have on recipient economies in Part III. Although the broad conceptual background to the work as a whole is provided in the general Introduction of the thesis, each Chapter has a section devoted to a dedicated and specific review of the literature. Moreover, the thesis also contains an acknowledgement of the limitations of the study, which is provided in the concluding sections of each Chapter, as well as a discussion of the contributions and implications that the analyses developed in the various Chapters have for academic research and policy-making.

This dissertation examines the theory and practice of development in South Vietnam’s Second Republic from the aftermath of the 1968 Tet Offensive to the signing of the Paris Peace Accords in 1973. Based on Vietnamese and American archival material, it explores the development approaches of both the South Vietnamese and United States governments. In particular, it examines the ways in which South Vietnamese elites and U.S. officials in Washington and Saigon responded to the various development paradigms on offer to postcolonial states between the 1950s and 1970s, namely modernization theory, community development, land reform, and an emerging neoliberal economics. In doing so the dissertation makes three primary arguments. In contrast to much of the literature on the final years of the American War in Vietnam, this dissertation argues that development remained a crucial component of the United States’ and South Vietnamese strategy after the Tet Offensive. It highlights both the continuities and changes in U.S. approaches to international development between the Johnson and Nixon years as well as arguing that debates about development strategies in Vietnam during this time presaged larger shifts in international development later in the 1970s. Secondly, it argues that South Vietnamese elites had a transnational development vision. They not only employed U.S. theories of development but also drew on the lessons offered by other states in the Global South, particularly Taiwan and South Korea. Finally, the dissertation argues that the South Vietnamese government employed development to earn domestic legitimacy and shore up its authoritarian governance. The dissertation makes three historiographical interventions. Firstly, it illuminates U.S. development practice in the Nixon era. Secondly, the dissertation shows that South Vietnamese officials shaped development outcomes, thus granting agency that is largely absent from accounts of this period. Finally, it demonstrates that historians must place South Vietnam within the larger framework of decolonization and East Asian anti-Communism.

This thesis addresses how and why West African consumers, especially those along the Senegal River valley, imported and consumed Indian cotton textiles from the eighteenth to mid-nineteenth century, despite the fact that they produced textiles of various kinds. Using quantitative and qualitative sources collected from France, India, Senegal and the United Kingdom, the thesis fulfils this gap in the existing literature. Throughout this study, it will be shown that local textile production and consumption in West Africa based on factor endowments and natural environment shaped consumer demand and preferences for Indian cotton textiles whose quality was perceived to be more suitable to the life of inhabitants in the region (especially in the savannah and desert areas) than European textiles. In addition, Indian textiles not only suited conspicuous consumption among Africans but also regional economies in which cloth was used as an exchange medium. In the eighteenth century, West African demand for Indian cotton textiles of various types was central to the purchase by European merchants of slaves along coastal areas of West Africa. In the early nineteenth century, which witnessed the transition from the Atlantic slave trade to the trade in commercial agriculture, dark-blue cotton textiles produced in Pondicherry, called ‘guinées’, were of essential importance in the trade in gum Arabic in the lower Senegal River as a currency that replaced a domestically-produced cloth currency. The gum from the region was indispensable in the development of the textile industry in Western Europe at that time. This regional demand influenced the Euro-West African trade and the procurements by Europeans of cotton textiles in India. The thesis argues that historically constructed consumer agency in pre-colonial West Africa had global repercussions from the eighteenth to midnineteenth century.

In this dissertation I assess some of the effects for the early modern European economy which resulted from the large-scale discovery and exploitation of precious metals in the New World. I argue that the monetary injections which were a direct result of the increased precious metals availability were an important cause of stimulus for several early modern European economies. The thesis mainly consists of three papers. In the first paper I argue variation in production of precious metals in America can be helpful to identifying the causal effects of money in a macroeconomic setting. Using a panel of six European countries for the period 1531-1790, I find strong reduced-form evidence in favor of non-neutrality of money for changes in real economic activity. The magnitudes are substantial and persist for a long time: an exogenous 10% increase in production of precious metals in America leads to a hump-shaped positive response of real GDP, peaking at an average increase of 1.3% four years later. The evidence suggests this is because prices responded to monetary injections only with considerable lags. The following two chapters are focused on different aspects of the measurement and analysis of the causal effects of the monetary injections for the English economy. In the second paper, I put forward new data on annual coin supply for England over the long run. This is offered not only as a data construction exercise within the specific context of England, but also as a methodological contribution which in principle can be reproduced for some other countries. Finally, in the third paper, I present a historical discussion of the long-term effects of the early modern monetary injections in the context of the English economy. I show the increased availability of precious metals led to liquidity injections which matter for our understanding of the English industrious, industrial, and financial revolutions during early modern period.

The 1940s were the last time sovereign debt levels for many advanced economies were comparable to recent times. Following the Second World War the United Kingdom is viewed as having achieved the highest public debt to income ratio while still avoiding default of any country in last three centuries. However, previous research on the UK during this period has largely overlooked British post-war debt sustainability and the role played by financial repression. This thesis presents a conceptual framework of the mechanisms for achieving sovereign debt sustainability, along with their resultant political economy trade-offs. The conventional historical view that the UK avoided default on its sovereign financial agreements following the Second World War is re-examined and Britain is found to have ‘partially defaulted’ in the years following the Second World War. This thesis provides a historical narrative of the intellectual origins and policies of modern financial repression in Britain and presents alternative qualitative and quantitative measurements of financial repression. Monetary innovation accompanied 1930s-40s financial regulation, particularly the development of sophisticated currency black markets in New York and Switzerland. Statistical analysis of new daily time series data from these markets provides a quantitative market perspective on historical turning points during the 1940s. A currency taxonomy and discussion of the causes behind the rise and decline of alternative currencies is presented. While alternative currencies also featured during the 1940s they were arguably less numerous and less innovative than during the Great Depression period. The British case ultimately illustrates the complex dynamics and trade-offs of sovereign debt sustainability vis-à-vis other competing policy objectives, such as a desire for open markets and economic growth, financial stability, and geopolitical priorities.

In many respects, the mid-nineteenth century marks the beginning of China’s modern history: the Opium War (1839-42) and domestic turbulence compelled Chinese statesmen to realise that the old state apparatus was no longer able to cope with the changing world. However the pursuit of greater state capacity collided with a feeble ability to raise taxes and an ancient monetary system far from being unified. How did the government carry out even limited alterations to the monetary system in times of urgent fiscal need? And how did the monetary evolution proceed with these partial reforms? This thesis focuses on the movement of the Chinese monetary system from a traditional metallic system to a modern fiat money system, and discusses three issues during different phases of the transition. The first part re-examines the case of ‘Xianfeng inflation’ (1853-61) when the government attempted to issue new monies to resolve the crisis in public finances. It points out that under the traditional commodity money system the government had little impact on money supply, and that the so-called inflation was an outcome of coinage debasement combined with a banking crisis resulting from the debt default. The second part focuses on the introduction of modern coinage minted with steam power around the 1900s, enabling the government to supply credible monies that no longer relied on their intrinsic metallic values. It argues that this technological innovation allowed the Chinese government for the first time to implement effective monetary manipulation and exert an impact on the rural economy. The third part investigates the behaviour of money holders during a war. It compares the velocities of paper notes issued in Free China and Occupied China during the Second World War (1937-45) and demonstrates that the credibility of the monies depends most on people’s expectations about the survival of the regime. The transition from a traditional to a modern currency system is a search for a new monetary credibility that had formerly lain within the value of the metal. The evolution of the Chinese monetary system illustrates vividly the constant state struggle between monetary credibility – via coercion, technology, or legitimacy – and its pocket gain, when the fiscal soundness is at stake.

This thesis studies aspects related to the role of schools characteristics and their governance on students’ learning outcomes. The thesis contains three chapters. The first chapter explores the effect of exposing students to more science in high school on their enrolment and persistence in STEM majors at university. It exploits the different timing in the implementation of a reform that induced high schools in the UK to offer more science to high ability 14 year-old children. The findings show that a stronger science curriculum at high school increases the probability of enrolling and of graduating in a STEM major at university. Moreover, the effect masks substantial gender heterogeneity. It is indeed mostly concentrated on boys. Girls tend to choose more scientific subjects, but still the most female-dominated ones: they choose medicine, not engineering. The second chapter of this thesis analyses the effects of providing strong research incentives to university professors on the way they allocate effort between teaching and research and on the way they select into different types of universities. I find evidence that teaching and research efforts are substitute in the professors’ cost function: the impact of research incentives is positive on research activity and negative on teaching performance. Effects are stronger for young faculty members, who are exposed not only to monetary incentives but also to career concerns. Moreover, I find that less skilled researchers tend to leave the university under stronger research incentives. Since I estimate that teaching and research skills are positively correlated, this implies that also bad teachers tend to leave the university. The overall impact of stronger research incentives on the university teaching quality is therefore ambiguous: the negative effect on teaching performance for incumbent professors is compensated by the positive sorting effect, given by changes in the composition of teachers. The third chapter explores where do the large cross-country differences in students’ performances in international standardized tests come from. This chapter argues that, while most of the debate concentrates on country differences in the school systems, differences in cultural environments and parental inputs are instead of great importance. I show indeed that the school performance of second generation immigrants is closely related to the average one of native students who still study in their parents’ countries of origin. This holds true even after accounting for different family background characteristics, different schools attended and different patterns of selection into immigration. This pattern questions whether PISA scores should be interpreted only as a quality measure for a country’s educational system. They actually contain an important intergenerational and cultural component. Parental inputs are found indeed to explain a large part of the cross country variation in school performance, for instance they account for more than one third of the gap between East Asia and other regions.

<p> A century ago, foreign governments and their actions were essentially beyond U.S. judicial reach. In the 1950s, however, U.S. courts began to govern more and more activities of foreign governments leading to a transformation in the modality of U.S. power directed abroad. Legal historians describe this as a transition from an &ldquo;absolute&rdquo; to a &ldquo;restrictive&rdquo; practice of sovereign immunity, and one dominant narrative explains the transition as a pragmatic move away from an obsolete model of &ldquo;territorial sovereignty&rdquo; to a more flexible, &ldquo;de-territorialized&rdquo; or even &ldquo;de-spatialized&rdquo; sovereignty better suited for a globalized economy. Through tracing key U.S. legal changes involving foreign sovereign governments from 1898 to 2014, with a focus on sovereign debt law, I argue that transnational sovereign economic activity in fact remains dependent as ever on national borders &mdash; albeit borders that are continually reconfigured through minute changes in U.S. common law. </p><p> Far from representing a homogeneous de-territorialization of the contemporary international legal order, I show that there has been an uneven re-territorialization that reduces the authority of most countries over their own economic decisions while expanding the judicial reach of a few &mdash; primarily the United States &mdash; and that New York state law has been especially important in this process. This has resulted not in a general restriction of state sovereignty in the face of &ldquo;globalization,&rdquo; but in a differential displacement of economic sovereignty from post-colonial, poor and indebted states to rich, industrialized ones. The legal structures developed since the 1960s have aimed at entrenching and extending U.S. dominance over the global capitalist order and presently function to perpetuate exploitative relations between sovereign debtors and private creditors. </p><p> U.S. judicial power has been a crucial and largely overlooked pillar of post-war U.S hegemony. I show how judicial transformations of the past half-century have occurred in relation to changing economic conditions, including threats to U.S. property posed by Third World nationalizations in the 1950s to the 1970s, rising indebtedness since the 1970s, and an ongoing overaccumulation crisis. The expansion of U.S. judicial power has simultaneously been driven at every step by U.S. geopolitical interests, including, importantly, the desire to contain Communism and maintain the colonial status quo in the context of the Cold War, widespread de-colonization and Third Worldist movements, and the reconstruction of U.S. dollar hegemony in the 1980s. </p><p> I argue that the expansion of U.S. judicial power in the past half-century should be understood as territorial insofar as it has defined the space over which the state (in the form of courts) may exercise authority. Through a critical analysis of this legal history I show how the reconceptualization of key legal dichotomies &mdash; most importantly, foreign/domestic, public/private, and political/legal &mdash; has been a fundamental spatial mechanism through which these legal territories are produced and contested. Since the 1960s, U.S. &mdash; especially New York &mdash; courts have increasingly reclassified foreign sovereign transnational activities as &ldquo;private&rdquo; (rather than &ldquo;public&rdquo; or &ldquo;sovereign&rdquo;) and therefore as properly within the scope of U.S. judicial (&ldquo;legal&rdquo;) rather than executive (&ldquo;political&rdquo;) authority. Foreign sovereign activities have also increasingly been reclassified from &ldquo;foreign&rdquo; (meaning outside the United States) to &ldquo;domestic&rdquo; (meaning inside the United States). Together, these interlinked changes have been used to bring activity that would previously have been considered beyond the authority of U.S. courts within U.S. judicial reach. This has expanded U.S. authority as a whole through the modality of judicial power, while simultaneously de-politicizing important social questions and removing them from even the possibility of democratic debate. (Abstract shortened by ProQuest.)</p><p>

In this thesis I explore contemporary understandings and practices of sustainability. Based on an ethnographic study at Anuvelar Investments, a sustainable financial services organisation, I contribute to both the conceptual and strategic literature by drawing upon the theoretical resources of discourse theory. In doing so, I position sustainability as a discourse which has implications for how it can be conceptualised but also how it can be understood in practice. My overall questions relate to conceptualising the contested and contingent nature of sustainability, but also the role of subjectivity when understanding sustainability in practice. All of which, I later argue, contribute to the political role particular articulations of sustainability might play within society more broadly. First, I note the ambiguous and contested nature of sustainability as being unavoidable due to the nature of language and discourse and its construction within an antagonism between pro-financial and pro-social/environmental logics. I contribute a conceptualisation of sustainability as a discourse that is set boundaries as to what it means within a particular context. This contextual understanding of sustainability shows how the discourse excludes and includes certain elements but also modifies or quilts other concepts, positions and ideas. It does so, I argue, due to the ‘empty’ quality of sustainability as a discourse, standing as an open yet powerful concept that can align various different positions and ideas. Second, building upon an understanding of the ambiguous and contested nature of sustainability I explore instances of identification with sustainability at Anuvelar Investments. Such an exploration mobilises the concepts of fantasy and enjoyment to contribute an understanding of the affective character of sustainability. Based upon interview data and observations I point to the beatific and horrific fantasies that engage and disgust individuals at Anuvelar Investments. Although the beatific character of sustainability provides a source of enjoyment for many, the horrific fantasies that are concealed within and outside the discourse are deemed equally pertinent in the maintenance of a sustainable subject. In so doing, I contribute to and problematise the sustainability literature that calls for employee engagement with the values of sustainability. Third, I contribute to the debates within critical management studies (CMS) in reference to the empirical work produced in this thesis and the particular case study of Anuvelar Investments. In presenting a vignette from my ethnographic study at Anuvelar, I explore the many ways in which it is possible to critique certain practices performed at Anuvelar. However, drawing on the political theory of Chantal Mouffe and discourse theory more broadly I present a different approach to critique that seeks a more positive approach and a more productive platform for engagement. Overall this thesis provides an important contribution to an understanding of sustainability as a discourse within contemporary organisations. In addition to this, it puts forward an argument that queries whether sustainability should always be seen as hijacked by or coopted into capitalism. Instead, I propose that sustainability can in fact be a useful discourse from which to challenge the status quo, albeit dependent upon its articulation.

This thesis consists of three substantive chapters on the impact of externalities on policy outcomes in selected contexts. Chapter 2 develops a theoretical model of international environmental agreements between the high-income countries of the world. It contributes to the literature on carbon leakage by focusing on the investment channel. Three policy scenarios are considered: full agreement, non-cooperative policy and partial agreement. The full agreement is characterised by complete cooperation within the whole high-income bloc, in both deciding the amount of allowed emissions and setting the ad valorem tax on abatement. The non-cooperative policy is characterised by the individual high-income country choosing independently both emissions level and the abatement tax. The partial agreement is characterised by emissions chosen cooperatively within the high-income bloc and the abatement tax set non-cooperatively. Our results show that under full agreement carbon leakage is negative, whilst under the other two policy scenarios it is positive. Indeed, we show that carbon leakage is due to the design of the partial agreement, which leaves the choice of the policy instrument to be implemented to the individual signatory. The aim of Chapter 3 is to explain why a government signs up to an international environmental agreement (IEA), thereby renouncing the freedom to choose its own environmental policy. In a two-period model of probabilistic voting à la Lindbeck and Weibull (1987), the incumbent government decides on the level of commitment to the IEA in the first period. There are two competing political parties, which care about the environmental policy implemented in the country and about the rents from being elected. Each party faces a trade-o¤ between implementing its ideal environmental policy and committing to a policy that increases its chances of reelection. The non-green party’s ideal policy requires rejection of the IEA. However, if the electorate is sufficiently green, the party will choose a level of commitment to the IEA that is greater than zero. The green party’ ideal policy requires full commitment to the IEA. However, if the electorate is sufficiently green, the party will choose a level of commitment to the IEA that is lower than one. Chapter 4 develops a static model where there is a political issue of dichotomous type and agents can either be in favour or against it (e. g. peaceful co-living with the members of the other ethnic community). Our model shows that the evolution over time of the idea depends on the fraction of the population supporting it. Indeed, if the proportion of the population supporting an idea is lower than a certain threshold, then the agents supporting it will change their opinion and switch to the opposite opinion. If the proportions of the population are evenly balanced between the two opposite ideas, then agents on either side will stick with their initial opinion. We apply this model to the Cyprus conflict in order to explain why peace- keeping authorities have unsuccessfully been trying to find a solution since 1974. To that end, we use UNDP-ACT Survey data from the period 2007-2013. These data show that Cypriots are stuck in an impasse, where more than 40% of the population is highly concerned about the situation of the island, but nonetheless the fraction of the population who desires to reach a solution is quite low and the proportion of the population who supports peaceful co-living is stagnant. The aim of the paper is to give a theoretical explanation of this impasse and explain the reason why decades of international efforts miserably failed.