Working Papers (copies available upon request):

“The Geoeconomics of Corporate Control: Trends in Global Mergers and Acquisitions 2005-2023.” (under review)

Abstract: Recent studies on the “geoeconomic turn” in global economic relations highlight the surge in policies such as investment screening mechanisms (ISMs) designed to protect domestic firms and strategic technologies from foreign acquisitions. This article assesses the effects of the geoeconomic turn on global patterns of cross-border mergers and acquisitions (M&As) from 2005-2023, with a focus on the investments of American, European, and Chinese firms. The results indicate a general decline in global M&As both in the number and value of deals, as well as the ratio of foreign to domestic investments. However there is minimal support that these declines are the result of increasing fragmentation of global acquisitions along geopolitical lines. Additionally I analyze trends across thirteen strategic sectors and find significant variation in evidence for deglobalization, de-risking, and fragmentation. The findings demonstrate that despite a clear shift in the governance of cross-border capital flows, the extent to which this is being realized in the acquisition strategies of firms is far more nuanced. The study contributes to recent literature on the material effects of the geoeconomic turn and highlights the importance of incorporating business power and agency in current debates regarding deglobalization and the nature of economic competition between the US, China, and EU.

“Financing the Green Transition: State Directed Credit in Renewable Energy Technologies and Critical Minerals” (writing in progress)

Abstract: In response to the rise of China and other emerging powers governments in advanced economies are increasingly abandoning neoliberal orthodoxy in economic governance and industrial policy has returned in force. One particular focus of such initiatives is renewable energy technology and the critical minerals required to produce them. This study presents a comparison of the policy types state are employing to finance the green transition with a focus on the US, EU, China, and India. The main areas of comparison concern the share of direct state credit allocated to firms through state-owned financial institutions and grants, as well as indirect means to mobilize private capital by “de-risking” investment through loan-guarantees, production subsidies, and the tax code. Drawing on the Global Trade Alert (GTA) database I identified firm-specific recipients of state financing subsidies related to electric batteries and rare earth minerals. Additionally I used the Dealscan database on the commercial loan market to examine trends in the level of private credit to these firms. Results to come soon!

Drawing on the Global Trade Alert database

“Beyond “Greenwashing” and Corporate Social Responsibility: Corporate Elite Networks and the Emergence of Private Transnational Regulatory Organizations”

Abstract: Since the turn of the century the number of private standards and certifications related to environmental and social responsibility (ESR) issues available to corporations proliferated. Adopting the terminology of Green (2014) I classify the entities that administer these as private transnational regulatory organizations, or “PTROs”. Despite recent scholarly attention towards PTROs there remains a significant lacuna: the firms. In addition, existing studies are largely focused on a single organization or a group of PTROs confined to a particular issue area and are concerned primarily with institutional variation and the effectiveness of such private regulatory regimes. This study presents an aggregate dataset of PTROs that allows for examination of general features across issue areas. Additionally I investigate the characteristics of participating corporations and the types of inter-firm relations among those that share PTRO membership. The analysis revealed three key findings: 1) Most (72 percent) of private certifications impose “hard” verification schemes that require some form of auditing or independent verification, and this is higher for issue specific PTROs compared to those with more general ESR . Additionally firms from emerging markets (EMs) were more likely to participate in organizations with hard verification than those in advanced economies. 2) Through the application a Louvain community detection algorithm on the bipartite network projection (i.e. comprised of firms that share PTRO membership with each other) I found two distinct communities split between firms from advanced economies and emerging markets. 3) Firms from China and to a lesser degree India are the most prominent in global PTRO networks, as are other export-oriented developing economies such as Vietnam and Thailand, indicating the use of PTROs membership by EMs as a means to access to Western markets and larger and more stable supplier contracts.