Russia's Neighborhood Policy and Its Eurasian Client States: No Autocracy Export
Do authoritarian regimes engage in active export of their political systems? Or are they primarily concerned about their geopolitical interests? This article explores these questions by examining Russia's policy towards Abkhazia, South Ossetia, and Transnistria. In all three de facto states, Moscow is fully able to dictate election outcomes should it desire to, but, we argue, has increasingly refrained from doing so. These client states are unlikely to attempt to escape from Russia’s tutelage; and with its geopolitical interests fully ensured, Russia appears willing to grant them latitude. We then ask whether these findings can be extrapolated to serve as a template for understanding Russia's policy towards its client states more generally, discussing Moscow's reactions to attempted regime change in Armenia and Belarus.
Environmental performance of foreign firms: Chinese and Japanese firms in Myanmar
Little is known about how the environmental approaches of foreign investors in developing countries are formed. The objective of this study is to conceptualize and investigate the drivers of the environmental performance of foreign firms. This is done through a comparative analysis of the environmental profiles of Chinese and Japanese firms in Myanmar. Applying institutional and resource-based theories, the study investigates the complex and multifaceted roles that domestic regulations and internal resources of firms play in their environmental performance. The study contributes to the literature on corporate environmental behaviour by constructing a novel set of environmental variables connected with FDI. The research is based on survey data covering 296 Chinese and 125 Japanese companies operating in Myanmar. The data are analysed using a hierarchical multiple linear regression. It is found that Japanese companies tend to adopt all-inclusive and comprehensive strategies driven by both regulatory pressure and firm capacity when addressing environmental issues, while the environmental choices of Chinese companies tend to be driven by intra-firm resources. For Chinese companies, neither ownership type nor operating in a polluting industrial sector necessarily influence the environmental profile, whereas both of these variables had significant effects on the environmental performance of Japanese firms. The findings indicate that both resource-based and institutional theories are useful when assessing the influence of environmental regulations on FDI in developing countries.
Energy Governance for Sustainable Development (ENERGO)
ENERGO aims at the advancement of scientific evidence-based mutual knowledge development in the fields of energy economics and policies, governance, and sustainable development. ...
Premien for utenlandske eierskap i Norge: Opprinnelseslandskarakteristika og Kina-effekten
Many studies from a number of different countries show that there is a premium for foreign ownership; Foreign-controlled enterprises (UKFs) are larger and more productive than domestic-controlled enterprises. In the article, I use register data to show that this also applies to Norway. UKF has particularly high values of a number of enterprise characteristics that are often associated with productivity, such as number of employees, turnover per employee, value creation per employee, salary and trade in goods and services per employee. Using regression analyzes, I estimate, for example, that UKF has more than 80 per cent more employees than domestically controlled companies and almost 40 per cent higher turnover per employee (after taking into account that UKF may be overrepresented in some industries and / or year). Among the enterprise characteristics that are studied, only research and development activity for which there is no UKF prize. Furthermore, I find that the characteristics of the country of origin of UKF affect the size of the prize. In general, the premium is higher the larger and more developed the country of origin is and the further away from Norway it is. For the number of employees, turnover per employee and retail trade per employee, there is also a separate China effect; The estimates show that Chinese UKF, compared to other UKFs, has almost 60 per cent more employees, more than twice as much turnover per employee and even greater exports and imports per employee.
Utenlandske direkteinvesteringer og eierskap i Norge
Foreign investment is an important component of the economy of many countries. This is the case for Norway too, where foreign-controlled enterprises employ 21 percent of the workers in the (private) business sectors. We know that foreign investment flows are changing, with increased activity from countries that have traditionally invested little abroad. This is true for China, especially, but also for India, Russia, and some other non-traditional investor countries. In this article, we study how Norway’s position as a destination for investment is changing. We discuss the developments in relation to established theories within economics and political science.