Gender Equality

Appelons-la Magda. Le nom est inventé, mais l’histoire est vraie. Elle est née au Lesotho il y a 35 ans. Sa vie illustre le fléau que subissent les femmes en termes de violences physiques, sexuelles et psychologiques.

Your brother was a great judge and statesman, among the first to understand the real dimensions of the mafia phenomenon and the importance of judicial cooperation. His work and legacy have helped to change the strategies to combat organized crime. His path has been defined by the spirit of sacrifice and the awareness of risks. He was born and he lived in Sicily and was surrounded by forms of acceptance and resignation caused by the Mafia. What was his relationship with his land? Can you tell us about how he developed his strength and determination in Sicily?

Foreign direct investment (FDI) and multinational enterprises (MNEs) are important sources of financing for developing countries. In this context, the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) has a long track-record of looking at both spillovers from FDI and gender equality. The policy study on investment by transnational corporations and gender provided a preliminary review of the academic literature on the impact of foreign investment on gender policy and practice, focusing on the wage and employment effects, and the related potential for women’s empowerment (UNCTAD, 2014). In addition, the 2020 World Investment Report (UNCTAD, 2020a) describes that the world’s leading multinational enterprises are increasing their gender equality reporting and policies, contributing to broader female representation and positive development impacts. Finally, several of the papers in this special issue served as background research for the UNCTAD (forthcoming) policy report on The International Transmission of Gender Policies and Practices: The Role of Multinational Enterprises. This original academic research was presented at an expert group meeting in May 2020, which brought together researchers, practitioners, and policymakers to discuss tangible policy recommendations and development impacts, while formally validating the quality of the research as part of the review process.

We study an often-overlooked factor behind gender inequality: globalization, in particular, foreign direct investment (FDI). Building on a growing literature that studies the impact of trade and FDI on gender inequality, we test whether foreign-owned firms exhibit a different gender wage gap (GWG) than firms with domestic ownership, using unique South African administrative matched employer-employee data. We find that the unconditional GWG is substantially smaller in foreign-owned firms than in firms with domestic ownership. We also find that for foreign-owned firms this difference is reversed once we control for a large set of fixed effects. In our preferred specification, foreign-owned firms have a larger GWG of about 2.4 percentage points. The share of women employed in foreign firms is lower than in firms with domestic ownership, in contrast to similar studies, which may indicate an underlying inequality in opportunities for women within a developing country context.

Government policy and private sector practice have the ability to spread gender equality, which can have an impact on growth and development. Over the past years, an upsurge has been observed in trade agreements that carve out space for gender issues in their agendas. The same is not true for international investment treaties. Foreign direct investment inflows can lead to more opportunities for women in the job market but may also exacerbate disparities. This paper aims to address and compare the role and effect of gender provisions in trade and investment agreements, and to shed light on additional policies that may be needed to ensure that governments and multinational enterprises address gender constraints.

This paper investigates how the interplay between foreign direct investment (FDI) and the availability of technology affects labour market outcomes for women in Viet Nam. Using household surveys, we explore the relationship between industrial exposure to FDI, access to technology, and employment and wages. We find that FDI is associated with increases in employment and wages by more in hightechnology areas of the country. In areas of the country with weak technology, foreign investment is associated with lower employment and lower wages, particularly for men. Together, these results highlight the importance of absorptive capacity; that is, to truly benefit from foreign investment, the domestic economy needs a sound education system and established technology. We also find that an equal increase in foreign investment in high-tech provinces is associated with larger increases in top wages for men than for women. In general, these results suggest that foreign investment may be associated with a rising gender wage gap at the high end of the wage distribution.

This paper analyses the effect of foreign ownership on female employment using micro-level data from the Chilean Manufacturing Survey. Particularly, it examines whether foreign-acquired firms hire proportionately more female workers than domestic firms. To control for the possible endogeneity of the foreign acquisition decision, we use propensity score matching combined with a difference-in- differences approach. In addition, we compare firms operating in the same industry-year. Our results show that foreign ownership increases the share of female workers within the firm. One year after acquisition the share of female workers is 1.64 percentage points higher in acquired firms than in non-acquired firms, and this figure increases to 3.55 percentage points two years after acquisition. When we separate female workers into skilled and unskilled categories, we observe that the positive effect of foreign acquisition is present only for skilled women. One year after acquisition, the share of skilled women is 4.60 percentage points higher in acquired firms than in non-acquired ones, and two years after acquisition this figure increases to 6.63 percentage points. We also present evidence that foreign acquisition increases the share of skilled women only when the acquired firm was not an exporter before its acquisition, supporting Becker’s (1957) theory on taste- based discrimination.

This book is a valuable reference document for the study of the evolution of contemporary socioeconomic life, marked by radical changes in structures, behaviours, methods of production and consumption, and rules of the social game. The current changes are of a “revolutionary” nature and thus make possible the vision of the future, which is necessary to decide on investments (material or immaterial). The uncertain dominates. Optimistic thinkers or actors believe that insofar as nothing is safe, everything is possible. But we still have to understand what is desirable, necessary or possible, because opportunities and risks are linked. The analysis of key success factors that are, or have been, actually operational is therefore of the highest interest.

As the green bond market continues to develop and assume a critical role as a post-pandemic vehicle for supporting a balanced economic rebuild and credible transition efforts, policymakers must reassess the current disclosure regime. This paper derives findings from Bayesian games to demonstrate that the prevailing labelling regime for green bonds is susceptible to the adverse selection problem; due to informational asymmetries, allocative inefficiencies arising from capital misallocation to inherently “non-green” bonds may ensue. To prevent the erosion of confidence in the market segment and support the potential of impact finance instruments to affect positive social and environmental change, this paper draws on established game theory frameworks to inform recommendations for policyled solutions to uphold the market’s credibility. These recommendations concern the integration of a regulatory infrastructure, a centralized ongoing audit under an “exogenously costly” regime and the introduction of a clearer course for legal recourse against issuers that mislabel bonds.

International business in the past century has largely been the domain of large multinational enterprises and banks, as well as small exporting and importing companies. The scope of international business activity has grown in recent years, and today there are many State-owned companies involved in international business activities, as well as financial investors rather than only industrial or commercial companies undertaking foreign direct investment (FDI). Government policy toward international business has largely been supportive since the 1990s, while concerns have arisen particularly in regard to the activities of State-owned enterprises and also the activities of non-traditional investors such as investment funds. To achieve the greatest benefits from FDI and trade, governments need to understand which companies are making the key decisions in global value chains and to collaborate in rule-setting and in guiding companies to pursue desirable activities and to limit non-business goal-seeking.

Why does aggregate foreign direct investment (FDI) fall with distance? We conjecture that high trade costs adversely affect FDI entry decisions in a dynamic setting, even when controlling for previous export experience in foreign markets. We test this hypothesis using Japanese firm-level data for the period of 1995–2018, and find that the probability of FDI entry decreases with distance. We conclude that trade costs limit a firm’s ability to assess foreign market uncertainty. As a result, a firm may exit a foreign market before realizing the potential profitability and never establish an affiliate there. This result is highly relevant for policymakers, as it proves that trade liberalization and FDI facilitation policies may reinforce each other, resulting in a compound effect for both exports and FDI.

Countries attract foreign investors, “entrants”, to invest and venture by employing policy programmes and marketing strategies. Country attractiveness for foreign investors relates to international competitiveness. Instruments building a formal status, such as golden visas and citizenship, are used to attract individual foreign investors and their families. These are often cosmopolitan people, i.e. global citizens but also global diasporans. They contribute to the economy, ideas and transnational entrepreneurial ecosystems. These policy instruments are criticized partly due to missing legitimacy, partly due to concerns about geopolitics and international crime. However, diasporic investors manifest different motivations and commitments, making them particular. This study examines what kind of investor programmes are offered to different foreign migrant investors and whether they address diasporic ties. It presents a country comparison of investor policy pathways towards citizenship. It contributes to the literature on migrant investment and policymaking.

Direct exporting activities and outward foreign direct investment (OFDI) are two types of internationalization that differ in firms’ opportunities, resources and risks. We study home-country institutional factors for internationalization and empirically investigate the direct and joint effects of export regulations, credit markets and corruption in explaining exporting and OFDI from a country. Using country-level data from 96 developed and developing countries between 2000 and 2018, we test a series of hypotheses and examine nonlinearity in the relationships. The results of the study suggest that export regulations partially affect exporting but do not affect OFDI. Access to financial resources can be critical in parts for both exports and OFDI. The findings also show that corruption can have different implications for exports and OFDI. The interactions of corruption with export regulations and credit markets reveal some unexpected and counter-intuitive results, highlighting the importance of distinguishing between the direct and indirect (joint) effects of business environment factors and corruption on exports and OFDI. The results of the study contain important information for policymakers.

This paper investigates the dynamic relationship between perceived corruption and foreign direct investment (FDI) in Egypt during the period 1970–2019. Using a novel back-casting methodology, it extrapolates perceived corruption time series between 1970 and 1980. The results of the Johansen cointegration technique and the multivariate vector error correction model show a positive relationship between perceived corruption and FDI, supporting the “greasing the wheels” effect of corruption. This positive association can be explained by several factors, such as the cross-interdependence of rent-generating assets with perceived corruption and FDI, and the use of FDI data based on the balance of payments that has growing financial-flows and phantom-FDI components. The findings of this paper have important policy implications. Improving the fundamental governance structure in Egypt should be accompanied by a comprehensive investment facilitation strategy to compensate for the removal of “grease” from the “wheels”.

This article seeks to explain recent decisions by countries to terminate their existing bilateral investment treaties (BITs) and revisit their commitment to future international investment agreements (IIAs). It argues that BITs, transnational corporations (TNCs), host States and international arbitration institutions form a decentralized system of global governance of foreign direct investment (FDI), based on insights from the fields of international political economy and international law, and that the nonmarket strategies of these TNCs have not only shaped the contours of this system but have also prompted host States to reform this system, from the perspective of a “political bargaining model”. The article illustrates this argument through the case of South Africa, which terminated its BITs with several European countries as a response to cases of investor–State dispute settlement (ISDS) and has sought to redefine its engagement with this system of global governance as a result.

This paper evaluates the Common Consolidated Corporate Tax Base (CCCTB) recently proposed by the European Commission. We find that if the CCCTB is introduced as it is currently proposed (including loss consolidation), then it is likely to impose large tax revenue costs of about one fifth of the corporate tax base. Second, we show that an application of the CCCTB proposals at only the European Union (EU) level would overlook the extent of profit shifting out of the EU and could lock in further unnecessary revenue losses. Third, major EU profit-shifting countries such as Luxembourg, Ireland and the Netherlands may experience significant revenue losses. Based on our analysis, the main policy recommendation is to consider extending the approach to a worldwide system, which would simultaneously deal with profit shifting within and out of the EU, and appears to offer the best prospect for revenue-positive, welfare-enhancing reform. For this to be viable, an immediate priority is to collate cross-country-comparable data and provide precise assessments of the range of policy scenarios.

This research explores the enablers of emerging-market firms (EMFs) leapfrogging in the internationalization process. Although many studies on rapid internationalization focus on exporting activities, we expand the concept to a higher-commitment entry mode: foreign direct investment (FDI). In addition, we investigate the role of an understudied force, foreign multinational enterprises (MNEs) in emerging markets, in enabling rapid internationalization of EMFs. Our hypotheses are tested using 1,612 first-time outward FDI projects from China between 2000 and 2014. The largely supported results suggest that minority foreign ownership and colocation with foreign MNEs allow EMFs to leapfrog certain stages in the establishment chain. Our findings offer alternative explanations, besides the government steward logic, to EMFs’ international expansion and contribute to the understanding, from a policy standpoint, that encouraging foreign-local partnerships is conducive to host-country industrial upgrading.