Merging Interests: When Domestic Firms Shape FDI Policy, explores the elite politics that undergird FDI policy. Previous research on FDI policy transformations have primarily attributed investment liberalization to democratization. Since inward investment increases the domestic supply of capital, the logic goes, domestic capital owners should seek to block FDI (which will decrease the returns to their capital stock) while workers should support openness to FDI because new investments will create jobs. Because democracies purport to strengthen the political power of labor, pro-FDI coalitions are more likely to prevail in democratic contexts. My research questions this narrative by considering how the preferences of large domestic firms may drive the politics of FDI regulatory liberalization. Merging Interests challenges the IPE field to reconsider the distributive effects of FDI. Rather than disrupting incumbent advantages, investment liberalization may benefit the largest and most politically influential firms in a local economy while disadvantaging smaller firms and even workers. My stand-alone article, “Foreign Direct Investment Policy, Domestic Firms, and Financial Constraints,” presents a distillation of the theory and quantitative analysis that is more fully examined in the book. I was pleased that it won the journal’s David P. Baron award for best article published in Business and Politics in 2020.

2019. Merging Interests: When Domestic Firms Shape FDI Policy. Cambridge University Press.https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108657143
 
            Reviewed in Perspective on Politics
            Book Panel at 2022 APSA – Discussants included Jeffry Frieden, Erica Owen, and Patrick Egan
 
2020. “Foreign Direct Investment Policy, Domestic Firms, and Financial Constraints.” Business and Politics. 22(2): 279–306. https://doi.org/:10.1017/bap.2019.13  
 
Winner of the 2020 David P. Baron Award for the best article published in Business and Politics in 2020