Deep trade integration and North-South participation in GVCs

2022. Transnational Corporations, 29(3), pp. 1 - 40.

DOI https://doi.org/10.18356/2076099x-29-3-1


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Do comprehensive trade agreements increase the participation of States in global value chains (GVCs) and contribute to their development? Although there is extensive evidence in the trade literature that deep preferential trade agreements (PTAs) can increase States’ bilateral export of final goods and, by implication, contribute to local development, much less is known about the characteristics of this effect on GVC relations. This paper answers the question in the framework of a gravity model and uses a comprehensive dyadic data set on trade in GVCs, PTAs, export and other characteristics for 188 countries and economies between 1990 and 2018. Results provide robust evidence that deep PTAs increase members’ bilateral trade in GVCs over the long term, especially when these agreements involve at least one developing country or economy and include provisions that support investment. These results underscore that GVC-facilitating deep PTAs are a powerful policy tool that can mobilize the potential of production and trade in GVCs for development.

UNDP's Engagement with the Private Sector, 1994-2011

Year: 2014

Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan, New York.

ISBNs 978-1-137-44919-1; 978-1-137-44920-7

DOI https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137449207


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Over the past decade, intergovernmental organizations (IGOs) have significantly grown the number and scope of their partnerships with the private sector. In this context, IGOs have launched policy initiatives and projects that make the private sector's core competencies, expertise, and activities essential parts of the solution to poverty, inclusiveness, and development. As a result, the policy agendas of almost all IGOs currently incorporate the design and implementation of innovative business models and inclusive market strategies at the base of the income pyramid in developing countries. These organizations are also actively involved in the process of development, promotion, and diffusion of norms of sustainable development and corporate social responsibility. Despite the objective importance of the private sector to current development policy and practice, the causes of recent changes are among the least conceptualized and examined in the fields of IGOs, international relations theory, and development policy. Concerned with the implications that these changes in IGOs' engagement with the private sector may have for our understanding of current development policy and practice, this book asks how and why these changes occurred, and to what extent the process of norm development influenced this transformation.

Is “being foreign” a liability for mining companies? Locational liabilities and social conflict in Latin America


2019. Resources Policy, 63(101425), pp. 1-10.

DOI https://doi.org/10.1016/j.resourpol.2019.101425

With Paul Alexander Haslam and Nasser Ary Tanimoune


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Do foreign mining firms face additional challenges and incur additional costs in host environments because of their nationality? This paper draws on the business literature on liability of foreignness (LOF), to examine whether foreign mining firms face a performance liability in comparison to locally-owned mining companies. In order to adapt this literature to the particular context of mining in developing countries, characterized by territorially-uneven costs of doing business abroad, and link it with stakeholder perceptions, we introduce the concept of “locational liabilities”. We show that foreign mining firms do experience a liability of foreignness associated with a higher likelihood of social conflict, than locally-owned firms, and that this effect can only be fully identified with the inclusion of locational liabilities that interact differentially with foreign and local firms. Furthermore, we demonstrate that these liabilities are not easily mitigated by corporate social responsibility practices, suggesting that foreign firms may have greater difficulty obtaining social licence to operate. The article uses an original database of 634 mining properties in five countries of Latin America, and a novel empirical methodology based on highly-localized property-level sources of data drawn in part from geographic information system (GIS) analysis.

Do Canadian mining firms behave worse than other companies? Quantitative evidence from Latin America

2018. Canadian Journal of Political Science/Revue canadienne de science politique, 51(3), pp. 521-551.

DOI https://doi.org/10.1017/S0008423918000185

With Paul Alexander Haslam and Nasser Ary Tanimoune


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The effects of Canadian mining companies on local communities abroad is an increasingly contentious topic as activists and academics, citing case studies, have drawn attention to alleged problems. Despite the policy relevance of this issue, there have been no generalizable analyses of whether mining companies headquartered in Canada behave differently from mining firms headquartered in other countries. This paper conducts the first rigorous statistical analysis of the effect of country-of-origin, or more specifically, “being Canadian” on the occurrence of known social conflicts in Latin America. We use an original database of 634 mining properties in five Latin American countries, which allows us to differentiate between a country-of-origin effect, and other probable determinants of social conflict in communities near mining properties. We find that Canadian mining firms perform slightly better than other foreign firms, but worse than locally-owned firms.