IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/bir/birmec/08-02.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Investment and Expropriation under Oligarchy and Democracy in a Heckscher-Ohlin World

Author

Listed:
  • Facundo Albornoz
  • Sebastian Galiani
  • Daniel Heymann

Abstract

We study the incentives to expropriate foreign capital under democracy and obligarchy. We model a two-sector small open economy where foreign investment triggers Stolper-Samuelson effects through reducing exporting costs. We show how incentives to expropriate depend on the distributional effects of the investment and how these affect the interests of the group in power. How investment affects the incomes of the different groups in society depends on the sectors where these investments are undertaken and the structural features of the economy such as factor intensity. We characterize expropriation equilibria and show that if investment is undertaken in the sector that uses labor less intensively, democracies are generally more prone to expropriate. This result provides one possible rationalization for the wave of expropriation equilibria and show that if investment is undertaken in the sector that uses labor less intensively, democracies are generally more prone to expropriate. This result provides one possible rationalization for the wave of expropriations in Latin America under governments with a broad popular base during the 20th Century.

Suggested Citation

  • Facundo Albornoz & Sebastian Galiani & Daniel Heymann, 2008. "Investment and Expropriation under Oligarchy and Democracy in a Heckscher-Ohlin World," Discussion Papers 08-02, Department of Economics, University of Birmingham.
    • Handle: RePEc:bir:birmec:08-02
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://repec.cal.bham.ac.uk/pdf/08-02.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Bruce A. Blonigen & Matthew J. Slaughter, 2019. "Foreign-Affiliate Activity and U.S. Skill Upgrading," World Scientific Book Chapters, in: Foreign Direct Investment, chapter 10, pages 325-367, World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd..
    2. Philippe Aghion, 2005. "Growth and Institutions," Empirica, Springer;Austrian Institute for Economic Research;Austrian Economic Association, vol. 32(1), pages 3-18, March.
    3. North, Douglass C. & Weingast, Barry R., 1989. "Constitutions and Commitment: The Evolution of Institutions Governing Public Choice in Seventeenth-Century England," The Journal of Economic History, Cambridge University Press, vol. 49(4), pages 803-832, December.
    4. Olson, Mancur, 1993. "Dictatorship, Democracy, and Development," American Political Science Review, Cambridge University Press, vol. 87(3), pages 567-576, September.
    5. Acemoglu, Daron & Johnson, Simon & Robinson, James A., 2005. "Institutions as a Fundamental Cause of Long-Run Growth," Handbook of Economic Growth, in: Philippe Aghion & Steven Durlauf (ed.), Handbook of Economic Growth, edition 1, volume 1, chapter 6, pages 385-472, Elsevier.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Akerman, Anders & Larsson, Anna & Naghavi, Alireza, 2011. "Autocracies and Development in a Global Economy: A Tale of Two Elites," Economy and Society 115848, Fondazione Eni Enrico Mattei (FEEM).
    2. Aidt, Toke S. & Albornoz, Facundo, 2011. "Political regimes and foreign intervention," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 94(2), pages 192-201, March.
    3. Sebastian Galiani & Norman Schofield & Gustavo Torrens, 2014. "Factor Endowments, Democracy, and Trade Policy Divergence," Journal of Public Economic Theory, Association for Public Economic Theory, vol. 16(1), pages 119-156, February.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Harris,Colin & Cai,Meina & Murtazashvili,Ilia & Murtazashvili,Jennifer Brick, 2020. "The Origins and Consequences of Property Rights," Cambridge Books, Cambridge University Press, number 9781108969055.
    2. Wafa Ghardallou & Dorsaf Sridi, 2020. "Democracy and Economic Growth: a Literature Review," Journal of the Knowledge Economy, Springer;Portland International Center for Management of Engineering and Technology (PICMET), vol. 11(3), pages 982-1002, September.
    3. Stephen Haber & Enrico Perotti, 2008. "The Political Economy of Financial Systems," Tinbergen Institute Discussion Papers 08-045/2, Tinbergen Institute.
    4. Czeglédi, Pál, 2009. "A tulajdonjogi biztonság szerepe a technológia elterjedésében [The role of property-law security in the spread of technology]," Közgazdasági Szemle (Economic Review - monthly of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences), Közgazdasági Szemle Alapítvány (Economic Review Foundation), vol. 0(9), pages 790-813.
    5. Enrico Perotti, 2013. "The Political Economy of Finance," Tinbergen Institute Discussion Papers 13-034/IV/DSF53, Tinbergen Institute.
    6. Mayshar, Joram & Moav, Omer & Neeman, Zvika, 2011. "Transparency, Appropriability and the Early State," CEPR Discussion Papers 8548, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    7. Andrianova, Svetlana & Demetriades, Panicos & Xu, Chenggang, 2011. "Political Economy Origins of Financial Markets in Europe and Asia," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 39(5), pages 686-699, May.
    8. Cason, Timothy N. & Mui, Vai-Lam, 2015. "Rich communication, social motivations, and coordinated resistance against divide-and-conquer: A laboratory investigation," European Journal of Political Economy, Elsevier, vol. 37(C), pages 146-159.
    9. Ceyhun Haydaroglu, 2015. "The Relationship between Property Rights and Economic Growth: an Analysis of OECD and EU Countries," DANUBE: Law and Economics Review, European Association Comenius - EACO, issue 4, pages 217-239, December.
    10. van Bavel, Bas, 2016. "The Invisible Hand?: How Market Economies have Emerged and Declined Since AD 500," OUP Catalogue, Oxford University Press, number 9780199608133.
    11. Zhang Wei & Li Ji, 2017. "Weak Law v. Strong Ties: An Empirical Study of Business Investment, Law and Political Connections in China," Review of Law & Economics, De Gruyter, vol. 13(1), pages 1-45, March.
    12. Pierre-Guillaume Méon & Khalid Sekkat, 2016. "A time to throw stones, a time to reap: How long does it take for democratic transitions to improve institutional outcomes?," Working Papers CEB 16-016, ULB -- Universite Libre de Bruxelles.
    13. Van Noort, S., 2017. "Causes and Effects of Private Property Rights Security," Cambridge Working Papers in Economics 1746, Faculty of Economics, University of Cambridge.
    14. Skarbek, David, 2016. "Covenants without the Sword? Comparing Prison Self-Governance Globally," American Political Science Review, Cambridge University Press, vol. 110(4), pages 845-862, November.
    15. Joseph Kwadwo Tuffour & Thelma Mensah, 2018. "The Effects of Governance Type and Economic Crises on Foreign Direct Investment Inflows in Ghana," Foreign Trade Review, , vol. 53(2), pages 63-80, May.
    16. Bernardo Guimaraes & Kevin D. Sheedy, 2017. "Guarding the Guardians," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 127(606), pages 2441-2477, November.
    17. Berggren, Niclas & Bjã˜Rnskov, Christian, 2013. "Does religiosity promote property rights and the rule of law?," Journal of Institutional Economics, Cambridge University Press, vol. 9(2), pages 161-185, June.
    18. repec:zbw:bofitp:2007_018 is not listed on IDEAS
    19. Oana Borcan & Ola Olsson & Louis Putterman, 2018. "State history and economic development: evidence from six millennia," Journal of Economic Growth, Springer, vol. 23(1), pages 1-40, March.
    20. Touré, Nouhoum, 2021. "Culture, institutions and the industrialization process," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 186(C), pages 481-503.
    21. Dmitriy Veselov & Alexander Yarkin, 2015. "The Great Divergence Revisited: Industrialization, Inequality and Political Conflict in the Unified Growth Model," HSE Working papers WP BRP 118/EC/2015, National Research University Higher School of Economics.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Expropriation; political regimes; democracy; oligarchy; foreign investments; Stolper-Samuelson;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • D72 - Microeconomics - - Analysis of Collective Decision-Making - - - Political Processes: Rent-seeking, Lobbying, Elections, Legislatures, and Voting Behavior
    • D74 - Microeconomics - - Analysis of Collective Decision-Making - - - Conflict; Conflict Resolution; Alliances; Revolutions
    • H71 - Public Economics - - State and Local Government; Intergovernmental Relations - - - State and Local Taxation, Subsidies, and Revenue
    • O15 - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth - - Economic Development - - - Economic Development: Human Resources; Human Development; Income Distribution; Migration
    • P16 - Political Economy and Comparative Economic Systems - - Capitalist Economies - - - Capitalist Institutions; Welfare State

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:bir:birmec:08-02. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Oleksandr Talavera (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/debhauk.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.