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This study aims to expand the conventional tax effort model to incorporate relevant economic freedom variables to investigate whether economic freedom fosters tax revenue performance in `sub-Saharan Africa (SSA).

This study uses data from 42 countries across the four sub-regions of SSA from the period 2005 to 2012 with 252 year-country observations in an unbalanced panel method. The data were statistically treated using feasible generalised least square (FGLS) and panel-corrected standard errors (PCSE) estimate techniques.

The findings are twofold. First, the principal finding of the study suggests that economic freedom promotes tax revenue performance. Precisely, the FGLS analysis indicates that property rights freedom, freedom from corruption and investment freedom, as well as the composite economic freedom, exerted positive significant impact on tax revenue performance. This implies that country, which attained high degree of economic freedom, is likely to have higher tax-to-GDP ratio than a country with low level of economic freedom. Secondly, the results of most conventional variables conform to the prediction in the traditional theory except per capita income. Specifically, agriculture share in GDP and per capita income indicate negative significant relationship with tax revenue performance.

Because little is known empirically about the connection between economic freedom and tax revenue performance, this study extended the conventional tax effort model to incorporate the economic freedom to bridge the knowledge gap due to the absence of empirical evidence on the relationship between economic freedom and tax effort.

The purpose of this paper is to examine empirically whether economic freedom affects entrepreneurial activity in three groups of countries, classified according to economic development.

Data on the index of entrepreneurial activity cover the period between 2002 and 2009, and are taken from the annual GEM (Global Entrepreneurship Monitor) reports and from the Index of Economic Freedom published by The Heritage Foundation from 1995 to 2009. The same analysis is carried out, grouping the countries by development level, following the classification included in the Global Competitiveness Report 2009‐2010. A Ridge regression analysis is performed to measure the model's goodness‐of‐fit and to determine equations that can be used for future predictions.

The results obtained in the correlation analysis show that economic freedom is closely related to entrepreneurial activity. The results suggest that TEA rates, opportunity‐TEA rates and necessity‐TEA rates decrease when there is an increase in economic freedom in a country, as just two of the areas analyzed – i.e. “government size” and “fiscal freedom” – appear to foster the emergence of new entrepreneurs. When countries are grouped by level of economic development, the results for countries belonging to the “Innovation‐Driven Economies” group show that the opportunity‐TEA rates increase as the economic freedom index grows.

The study indicates that entrepreneurship by opportunity increases in the group of Innovation‐Driven Economies with smaller “government size” and more “fiscal freedom”.

Economic freedom is the fundamental right of every person in a free society to control his/her own labor and property without government intervention beyond what is necessary to protect and maintain freedom itself. The purpose of this paper is to examine the association between economic freedom, inward foreign direct investment (FDI) and trade flows.

The authors test a moderated mediation model of the effects of economic freedom on trade flows with the objective of exploring the mediation effects of FDI and the moderating effects of government stability.

Based on a sample of 155 countries from different geographical areas, the study shows that economic freedom is associated with inward FDI, which, in turn, predicted trade flows. Furthermore, government stability moderated the relationship between economic freedom and FDI.

This study goes beyond the traditional focus on the macro determinants of trade flows and explores the link between economic freedom and trade flows, and the roles of inward FDI and political stability in the context of this relationship. It also provides a novel methodological approach to examine this relationship.

When developing online programs, institutions have a social responsibility to safeguard academic freedom. In the United States, a perceived lack of career relevance, declining enrollments, and a desire to expand institutional impact have compelled numerous institutions to create online degree programs. The decision to scale some online programs, in collaboration with for-profit online program managers, into enrollments in the thousands is seen by a number of faculty and professional organizations as evidence of the rise of neoliberalism, at the expense of academic freedom and faculty governance.

This chapter begins by setting the context for the discussion of academic freedom and online degree programs. I provide a review of the growth of online degree programs and discuss some of the reasons a campus might choose to take programs online, as some of the reasons reveal tensions impacting academic freedom. I follow with case examples and strategies that may help institutions balance online initiatives with practices that preserve academic freedom and quality. The chapter concludes that the challenges raised should not be framed as “either/or” choices – the examples provided demonstrate that academic freedom can and should be sustained, especially within large programs, regardless of being on-ground or online.

The purpose of the study is to investigate the role of disaggregated economic freedom measures in the foreign direct investment (FDI) and human development nexus.

The study uses a panel data of 32 selected African countries from 1996 to 2017. A dynamic ordinary least squares (DOLS) with fixed effects and instrumental variable (IV) econometric techniques was used to address issues of endogeneity and serial correlation commonly associated with panel time series data.

The Results indicate that FDI without accounting for absorptive factors has a positive but insignificant effect on human development for the selected African countries. However, FDI has a positive and significant effect on human development when interacted with measures of economic freedom such as investment freedom, business freedom and financial freedom. In contrast, yet plausible, FDI has a negative influence when interacted with property rights, trade freedom, government integrity and tax burden.

The study posits that to attract FDI into Africa with the purpose of improving human development, relevant absorptive capacities such as business, investment and financial freedom environment are critical. However, excessive capital flight and government interference through taxation and abuse of property rights should be controlled if the continent seeks to promote human development through FDI.

The novelty and originality of the study, are evident in the use of disaggregated measures of economic freedom as comprehensive absorptive capacities to examine how they complement FDI to impact on human development in Africa.

The purpose of this paper is to reveal how the host and the home countries’ formal institutions may affect mergers and acquisitions (M&A) abandonment by Russian multinational enterprises (MNEs), and how MNE industry can influence the results. The second objective of the study is to have a separate look at the negative experience, and to uncover its influence on M&A deal completion.

In the study, a sample of 446 international M&A deals initiated by Russian MNEs in the period of 2000–2014 is empirically tested by means of logistic regression analysis.

The empirical analysis indicates that better business environment in the host country is crucially important whereas development of business freedom at home may make the international M&A less attractive and increases the likelihood of M&A deal abandonment. Thus, the larger the institutional distance by this indicator the more likelihood the deal is completed. Contrary results are implied for property rights: the larger the distance between Russia and host country, the lower likelihood of M&A deal completion. Failure experience decreases the likelihood of acquisition completion whereas international experience increases.

The study has number of limitations: individual-level variables were not included in the model; and a limited number of factors were tested due to availability of data and moderate sample size.

The study indicates that better development of business freedom and moderate property rights protection in the host country are the most favorable factors for an M&A deal completion. Russian policymakers should realize that development of property rights protection in Russia ensures success of MNEs abroad, and development of business freedom reduces the outflow of capital from the economy.

The paper makes several theoretical and practical contributions: it contributes to institutional international business literature, indicating in which particular cases institutional distance has positive or negative effect on M&A completion. It also contributes to organizational learning literature, confirming that failures inhibit learning, and firms tend to repeat previous mistakes. Finally, the paper widens the scarce research on Russian MNEs, and on the role of the home country institutions for MNE’s behavior abroad.

The purpose of this paper is to clarify the relationship between entrepreneurial cognition and innovative entrepreneurial activity (IEA) across countries using an institutional perspective.

The paper tests theoretical model using data collected by the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor, the Global Leadership and Organizational Behavior Effectiveness study and the Index of Economic Freedom (IEF). A multi-level analysis is performed based on set of 1,004,620 observations from 49 countries spanning 13 years (2001–2013).

The results suggest that in terms of formal regulations; the relationship between entrepreneurial cognitions and IEA becomes stronger when there is an increase in intellectual property right and business freedom regulations in a country. On the other hand, in terms of informal institutions the relationship between entrepreneurial cognitions and IEA becomes stronger when the level of institutional collectivism and uncertainty decreases and performance orientation increases.

The study indicates that entrepreneurship by innovation increases when the individuals possess high level of entrepreneurial cognition under suitable institutional conditions (e.g. intellectual property right, business freedom, institutional collectivism, uncertainty avoidance and performance orientation).

This paper examines whether firms choose to source from multinational (MNC) suppliers instead of local suppliers as a means of overcoming weak contract enforcement institutions and as a means of accessing supply chain management capabilities. It uses a unique dataset of international contract manufacturing orders constituting the global supply chains of many of the world’s largest brands in footwear, sportswear, and apparel. It finds strong evidence that buyers are more likely to source from MNC suppliers in countries where contract enforcement is weak and when they have less experience sourcing from a given country. Further, it finds evidence that buyers are more likely to source from MNC suppliers when they source a wider variety of products, have smaller supplier networks, or have smaller order volumes.

This study explores the relationship between economic freedom and gender ideologies on the allocation of women’s opportunity-to-necessity entrepreneurship across countries. Opportunity entrepreneurship is typically understood as one’s best option for work, whereas necessity entrepreneurship describes the choice as driven by no better option for work. Specifically, we examine how economic freedom (i.e. each country’s policies that facilitate voluntary exchange) and gender ideologies (i.e. each country’s propensity for gendered separate spheres) affect the distribution of women’s opportunity-to-necessity entrepreneurship across countries.

We construct our sample by matching data from the following country-level sources: the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor’s Adult Population Survey (APS), the Fraser Institute’s Economic Freedom Index (EFI), the European/World Value Survey’s Integrated Values Survey (IVS) gender equality index, and other covariates from the IVS, Varieties of Democracy (V-dem) World Bank (WB) databases. Our final sample consists of 729 observations from 109 countries between 2006 and 2018. Entrepreneurial activity motivations are measured by the ratio of the percentage of women’s opportunity-driven total nascent and early-stage entrepreneurship to the percentage of female necessity-driven total nascent and early-stage entrepreneurship at the country level. Due to a first-order autoregressive process and heteroskedastic cross-sectional dependence in our panel, we estimate a fixed-effect regression with robust standard errors clustered by country.

After controlling for multiple macro-level factors, we find two interesting findings. First, economic freedom positively affects the ratio of women’s opportunity-to-necessity entrepreneurship. We find that the size of government, sound money, and business and credit regulations play the most important role in shaping the distribution of contextual motivations over time and between countries. However, this effect appears to benefit efficiency and innovation economies more than factor economies in our sub-sample analysis. Second, gender ideologies of political equality positively affect the ratio of women’s opportunity-to-necessity entrepreneurship, and this effect is most pronounced for efficiency economies.

This study offers one critical contribution to the entrepreneurship literature by demonstrating how economic freedom and gender ideologies shape the distribution of contextual motivation for women’s entrepreneurship cross-culturally. We answer calls to better understand the variation within women’s entrepreneurship instead of comparing women’s and men’s entrepreneurial activity. As a result, our study sheds light on how structural aspects of societies shape the allocation of women’s entrepreneurial motivations through their institutional arrangements.

Many foreign firms have made their initial public offering (IPO) debuts in the USA, without first being listed in their home market. The purpose of this paper is to investigate the association of a wide range of country risk measures with the valuation of foreign IPOs.

Based on the law and finance literature, it is hypothesized that IPO firms domiciled in countries with higher country risk are worth less, other things equal. This hypothesis is tested with a sample of international companies making their IPO debuts in the USA between 1986 and 2002.

It is found that several commonly used country‐level variables explain the observed IPO valuation differences across countries. In particular, the index of economic freedom, developed by the Heritage Foundation, and the Transparency International's corruption index have a significant impact on post‐offer IPO valuations. Specifically, IPO firms hailing from countries with more economic freedom and less corruption are associated with higher valuation in the aftermarket.

The paper investigates whether some commonly‐used country risk measures affect the valuation of newly US‐listed foreign firms.