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This paper aims to examine whether the mode of privatisation and the subsequent ownership structure affects post‐privatisation performance.

Utilising a theoretically derived sample of two matched telecommunications firms in New Zealand and Australia, and non‐parametric analysis of financial data, the performance of two forms of privatisation are compared: full privatisation via direct sale to foreign anchor investors versus partial privatisation via a domestic share issue restricting foreign ownership.

Concentrated ownership through direct sales to foreign owned anchor investors is not more efficient or profitable, nor does it result in increased capital investment; it does, however, result in higher dividend payouts.

These findings contradict the accepted wisdom and dominant theory in the field that full privatisation outperforms partial privatisation, and that FDI transfers firm‐specific ownership advantages enabling the recipient to outperform domestically owned firms. However, the findings are applicable to the two firms and countries studied and future studies need to extend these to the wider population of privatised firms.

While privatisation will improve organisational performance, the choice of whether to privatise by direct sale to anchor investors and foreign owners versus a partial share issue privatisation and keeping a domestic focus will have post‐privatisation performance implications.

A more nuanced understanding is provided of the performance implications of modes of divestiture and ownership structures in advanced economies.

The purpose of this paper is to classify the source countries of inward foreign direct investments (FDIs) to Turkey and to Germany as individual samples of developing and developed economies, to produce practical information to target company managers and owners that they can use for having much more investments or getting more bargaining power with the existing or potential investors.

Cluster analysis methodology with Ward’s (1963) technique is used to create significant groups out of FDI source countries.

The results show that foreign direct investors – labeled by their country of origin – investing in Turkey are grouped into two main clusters. First main cluster of Turkey has three sub-clusters. Investors investing in Germany are also grouped into two main clusters. First main cluster of Germany has two sub-clusters. Of all seven clustering criteria, four of them were prominent in grouping, which are: having a high equity ownership in the investment, investing in companies with high market capitalization, investing in companies with high/low financial risk and high/low financial performance, and investing in young companies. Furthermore, investors from same origin behave differently in Turkey and Germany. They adjust their attitude toward risk when the host country changes. Lastly, source countries in the sample that have a minimum distance in between, are the ones sharing similar cultural values.

The limitations of the study are the small number of observation with complete and standard company data needed, especially in Turkey, and the compelled shortness of time period for the empirical analysis. Some suggestions were offered for future researches to contribute to the topic by using bigger samples; by making variations in country, time, or industry; by relating country factors to social/entrepreneurial factors; and by supporting the research with qualitative techniques.

This paper constitutes a contribution to the empirical field research in Turkey, an emerging country with very limited firm-level financial and ownership data, compared to Germany, a developed country with relatively more data availability.

This paper focuses on execution costs as liquidity measure. Execution costs are related to volatility and are an important component of a firm’s cost of capital. The purpose of this paper is to examine whether emerging market firms have lower execution costs when they face less restrictions on foreign investment and when they have more foreign shareholders.

The authors begin by documenting the cross-sectional behavior of execution costs. The authors then obtain preliminary evidence on the interaction between execution costs, the investability index and actual foreign investment. These results foreshadow those the authors obtain with the regression analysis. The ordinary least square results show that more investable firms have lower execution costs after the authors control for firm size, stock price, return volatility, industry effects and country effects. This evidence is very robust and highly significant. Direct foreign ownership (FO) in emerging market firms also appear to be associated with lower execution costs. The economic benefit from lowering the investability index on trade execution costs is highly significant.

Using a large cross-sectional sample from 23 emerging markets, the authors show that firms with more ex ante restrictions on FO, measured by the investability index, have lower execution costs, such as quoted spreads (QS) and effective spreads (ES), after the authors control for firm size, stock price, return volatility, industry factors and country effects. In addition, direct FO in emerging market firms appears to be associated with lower execution costs. However, ex ante restrictions on FO dominate the influence of direct FO. For a 0.5 increase in the investability index in the range of 0–1, the QS will be reduced by 17 percent of the mean QS, and the ES will be reduced by 12 percent of the mean ES from the sample stocks.

There are important differences between the approach and most of the financial liberalization studies. First, whereas most of the earlier studies are conducted at the level of country or market analysis, the investigation is at the level of individual stocks. Second, the authors focus on a cross-sectional association that avoids a criticism leveled at time series analyses. Over-time studies often use specific time points to represent financial liberalization watersheds. This approach can be misleading when financial liberalizations are viewed as processes that unfold over time. Third, the proxies for financial openness are available not only for individual firms across markets, but the authors also make a distinction between potential and actual foreign investment. The authors further categorize actual foreign investment into direct and indirect FO.

The investment development path of emerging markets’ MNEs is significantly different from the developed (TRIAD) world’s MNEs; BRIC MNEs seem to have taken a different trajectory on account of various political and economic reasons, ranging from the ‘forms of entry’ to ‘country-specific advantages’ (Tulder, R. V. (2010). Toward a renewed stages theory for BRIC multinational enterprises? A home country bargaining approach. In K. P. Sauvant, G. McAllister, & W. A. Maschek (Eds.), Foreign direct investments from emerging markets: The challenges ahead (pp. 61–74). New York, NY: Palgrave Macmillan). Yet, some believe that in the long run the internationalization strategy of the developed world MNEs and BRIC MNEs will converge. Internationalization strategies as measured by OFDI depend on various macroeconomic determinants such as income, interest rate, openness of the economy, etc. The chapter intend to highlight, the significant difference between these two groups of countries on account of diverse political reforms towards internalization of firms, yet see if these different countries might converge.

Regression analysis examines the significance of the role of home government by testing the effect of governance indicators; that is voice and accountability, on OFDI. It further, tests for convergence of internationalization strategies of the two historically divergent groups, also, it tests convergence amongst the BRIC nations. Along with forecasting, time series analysis is also employed to examine convergence using univariate sigma convergence techniques.

Impact of voice and accountability is significant but it hinders OFDI for BRIC nations, while it promotes OFDI for TRIAD & ALL. Moreover, the analysis found the existence of convergence, that is BRIC will catch up with TRIAD, but though convergence exists amongst BRIC if we take a long span of time (45 years), it is absent in short span of time (19 years), as lately BRIC have shown divergent tendency.

Small sample size in multivariate regression analysis. Also, the governance indicator, that is voice and accountability, is perception based, and missing gaps in data for governance indicator is filled using interpolation.

Empirically testing the convergence of BRIC nations with the developed world. A univariate time series analysis is undertaken to understand each country’s heterogeneous FDI outflows and to address the research gap in existing forecasting literature. In addition, the comparison specifically between the Emerging Market Economies, that is the BRIC nations and the developed world gives some useful insights. This chapter ascertains the impact of governance indicator on OFDI; empirical literature shows such analysis for IFDI & FDI, but OFDI is rarely been dealt with.

A growing number of multinational enterprises (MNEs) are engaging with the United Nation’s sustainable development goals (SDGs) and trying to link the SDGs to their foreign direct investments (FDI). They are searching for ways in which they can contribute to the economic, social, and environmental dimensions of the sustainable development of host countries while pursuing their commercial and competitive objectives, that is, creating shared value (CSV). One type of foreign direct investor that has long-standing experience with balancing profit and impact is development finance institutions (DFIs), that is, public, or semi-public institutions investing in private commercial projects in developing countries with the aim of creating impact. Through the conceptual lens of organizational theory of hybrid organizations, this chapter analyzes how the large Danish DFI Investment Fund for Developing Countries (IFU) has balanced its SDG mission with financial profitability. This balance is achieved by focusing on the SDGs as the value driver at the organizational level; by applying a portfolio perspective on the balance between SDGs and profitability; and by applying rigorous impact measurement methodologies along with financial accounting at the project level. The chapter suggests that this kind of experience from DFIs may have important implications for other foreign direct investors, such as MNEs, seeking to engage with the SDGs. It also contributes to the literature by bringing an understudied foreign direct investor, that is, DFIs, into the international business (IB) literature on SDGs and by providing a conceptual framework for analyzing how MNEs can create shared value in their FDI.

Using a dynamic perspective this article examines, the general situation of the development of South Korean direct investment in China since 1992, when the two countries established diplomatic relations. It probes many characteristics of South Korean direct investment in China: its late start yet rapid rise; the smaller average value of Korean project investments; the accelerated process of localization by large South Korean enterprises in China; the diversified industrial distribution; and the wide-ranging geographical distribution. It analyses the reasons for the rapid increase in South Korean investment in China: the use of China's low-priced production factors, the direct entry of South Korean enterprises into the Chinese market, and the stable investment environment with fewer labor disputes that China provides. Finally, this article also proves that South Korean enterprises have achieved satisfactory results from their direct investment in China.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the importance of the political risk factor that, according to the literature, seems to excerpt a powerful influence in determining foreign direct investment (FDI) decisions by multinational firms. The first part of this paper is based on a thorough review of the literature concerning political risk, its definition, and how it relates to FDI. This part also aims to explore the current trend of academic publications as they relate to political risk and FDI. The second part is more critical in nature and attempts to explain the discrepancies determined by past literature, particularly when depicting the relationship between political risk and FDI. In its third part, this paper shows the importance of global expansion in the hospitality industry and the techniques applied in that sector in order to minimize political risk. The concluding comments, in the last part, are offered together with some recommendations to multinational corporate management.

This study aims to examine the relationship between private capital inflows, financial development and economic growth in 28 sub-Saharan African (SSA) countries between the periods 1995 and 2017.

The study used a secondary source of data obtained from the world development indicator (WDI) and used the system generalized method of moments (SGMM) and dynamic panel threshold regression to analyze the data.

The study found that foreign direct investment has a negative and significant impact on the economic growth of SSA. The study also found that portfolio investment has a positive impact on economic growth but it is statistically insignificant. However, when portfolio investment interacted with financial development, it became positive and statistically significant presupposing that financial development is a necessary condition for portfolio investment to exert impact on economic growth. Further, the study showed that the interaction of foreign direct investment with financial development has a negative and significant effect on economic growth. Finally, the study found the minimum threshold of financial development at 42.66 per cent.

Policymakers in SSA should be cautious and critical in the kind of foreign direct investment they attract as the open door policy to attract all kinds of foreign direct investment would not bring about the desired result. Also, policymakers in the region should develop and implement policies that would deepen and strengthen the financial system to foster the development of the country’s financial sector and accelerate economic growth.

The contribution of the study lies in establishing a minimum threshold of financial development; thus, providing a clear-cut direction for policymakers in SSA countries in their pursuit of financial development and economic growth.

This study examines the effect of host government interference with foreign investors’ assets on foreign direct investment (FDI) inflow. The author hypothesizes that the relationship between host government interference and FDI inflow takes the form of an inverted U shape. The author tests this hypothesis using data from the International Centre for Settlement of Investment Disputes between 1996 and 2017. The results support the above hypothesis. While host government interference with the assets of a few foreign investors may not deter FDI inflow, frequent interferences, which result in an increasing number of host state–foreign investor disputes, reduces FDI inflow in a host country. The analysis also shows that when faced with an increasing host country uncertainty, investors adopt a wait and see strategy. However, how long investors wait depends on the economic situation of the host country. For high-income countries, investors wait until approximately 10 disputes before reducing investments level in a host country, while for low-income countries, this waiting period is a mere two disputes. The findings of this study suggest that countries seeking to attract more FDI should not interfere with the activities of foreign investors, however, if they do, disputes should be settled at home, not in international arbitration courts, because doing so frequently may poison the host environment and deter other foreign investors from investing in the host country.

This study evaluates the impact of carbon emission on life expectancy in Nigeria. The study also investigates the mediating role of agricultural output and foreign direct investment as suggested by the environmental Kuznets curve (EKC) and the pollution haven hypothesis (PHH), respectively.

The hypotheses and theories were tested using structural equation modeling (SEM). Primary data were collected using cross-sectional survey design. Questionnaires were distributed and responses were used to measure the latent variables of the study. A confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) was used to evaluate the measurement models, while path analysis was used to estimate the coefficients of the structural equations.

Carbon emission was found to have a negative and significant impact on life expectancy. This impact constituted both direct and indirect effects that were mediated by both foreign direct investment and agricultural output. Carbon emission and agricultural output were found to play significant roles that lead to a further negative- and significant-mediated relationship of carbon emission with life expectancy.

Unlike many previous studies on air pollution, this study investigates carbon emission in particular as well as the mediating role of agricultural output and foreign direct investment in the carbon emission and life expectancy relationship. The use of SEM also fills a methodological gap as it computes coefficients of mediation and controls for measurement bias and multicollinearity.