For many, transnational capital is one of the most important driving forces of economic globalization; yet, we know little about what determines cross-border portfolio investments. In addition to recent economic literature's focus on information asymmetries as one key determinant of cross-border investment, this study brings in a political aspect to the field of international trade in assets. The –race to the bottom’ thesis connects domestic economic policies to investment decisions and argues that capital is more likely to move towards economies characterized by economic liberalism; political institutions are also relevant for portfolio investments, because democratic institutions often provide more credible protection against predatory practices. In this study, I model bilateral portfolio investments as a function of economic policies, political institutions, and levels of transparency of sending and receiving countries as well as important international connections. Empirical findings indicate the importance of transparency to attract portfolio investments. Moreover, transnational portfolio investments are only sensitive to some fiscal policy indictors and only within the OECD countries. Therefore, for non-OECD countries, there is still ‘room to move’ in maneuvering different aspects of fiscal policies. Finally, I find that investors care about the nature of political institutions as democratic institutions tend to be associated with higher levels of portfolio investment inflows. This is good news for developing countries that have undergone or are in the process of democratization. In addition to democratizing for peace, increased foreign capital further incentivizes a progression towards democratization.

In this study we advance the current research on corporate political strategy by examining how firms decide on their level of engagement in political action. This study proposes a contingency approach that identifies conditions in which firms prefer individual action to collective action in their pursuit of political strategy and introduces a framework that addresses this preference. Our results show that even in concentrated industries, a firm's preference of individual action over collective action varies when government contracts or research and development intensity are important considerations.

American political campaigns have become a multi-billion dollar industry. Rather than assume that only political factors affect the campaigns that voters see, scholars must assess the importance of the business incentives associated with political consulting. Economic competition does not match political competition; firms compete for clients within the two major parties, against their political allies. I argue that the supply of firms in each party, the revenue models in the industry, the diversification of client types, and the cooperative structure in each party all may affect political campaigns. The way the industry operates and the different patterns of behavior within each party create incentives and practices that may alter campaigns in response to economic factors having little to do with optimal political strategy. Using two original surveys and a network analysis, I analyze how the industry is changing and how consultants in each party cooperate and compete.

How and to what effect do firms coordinate their actions to deal with the negative external effects of productive activity? Under which conditions do associations engage in self-regulation and how do they tackle the specific regulatory challenges at stake? When developing hypotheses, we first vary attributes of the information environment in which private actors interact; and, secondly, actors' preferences as a function of the problem type at hand. With respect to the environmental conditions, our findings show that a regulatory threat matters when developing associative action, whilst the evidence is less clear as regards NGO campaigns. In terms of the problem type, we find that redistributive issues and prisoner's dilemma situations are much more conflict prone than coordination/win-win type of problems. Industry actors recur to various governance devices such as flexible contract design and compensation mechanisms to solve redistributive problems. Prisoner's dilemma (PD) problems may only partially be addressed by governance devices to the extent that free-riding is controlled and sanctioned within an association. We conclude that private actors engaging in self-regulation will not successfully manage all types of conflicts. They lack powerful sanctioning tools to deal with PD situations, but prove to be able to flexibly handle redistributive problems.