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In the wake of financial crises in the 1990s, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and G7 officials, along with private sector financial actors, launched an effort to develop and promulgate [...]

To purchase or authenticate to the full-text of this article, please visit this link: http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1468-2478.2008.00507.x Byline: Layna Mosley (*), David Andrew Singer ([dagger]) Abstract: Are equity markets just another facet of global finance, or are they unique in their responses to-and influences on-government policies and institutions? Recent work has explored the impact of political factors on bond market behavior and foreign direct investment, but little attention has been paid to stock markets. On the basis of the particular concerns of equity investors, we hypothesize a positive association between stock-market valuations and levels of democracy, shareholder rights, legal traditions, and capital-account liberalization, a negative association with real interest rates, and no association with fiscal deficits or surpluses. We assess our expectations by analyzing the political and institutional determinants of aggregate price-to-earnings ratios for a sample of up to 37 countries from 1985 to 2004, using both cross-sectional and time-series cross-sectional analyses. We find support for most, but not all, of our hypotheses. Our findings suggest that we must disaggregate the effects of different asset markets to understand the impact of economic globalization on government policies. Author Affiliation: (*)University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill ([dagger])Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Previous large-N research suggests that globalization could have either positive or negative consequences for labor rights in developing nations. This article examines the ways in which domestic political institutions and interests conditions the effects of economic globalization. It develops several hypotheses regarding the impact of domestic factors on labor rights outcomes and uses the case of Costa Rica to assess these hypotheses. The result is that although segments of the Costa Rican economy and labor force have benefited from industrial upgrading in recent years, the enclave nature of the export-oriented economy and the historical repression of organized labor render difficult the achievement of some internationally recognized core labor rights. The article concludes by discussing some of the issues for future research that are highlighted by the Costa Rican case. Keywords: labor rights; foreign direct investment; multinational production; Costa Rica; export processing zones

This article explores the impact of economic globalization on workers' rights in developing countries. The authors hypothesize that the impact of globalization on labor rights depends not only on the overall level of economic openness but also on the precise ways in which a country participates in global production networks. Using a new data set on collective labor rights, the authors test these expectations. Their analysis of the correlates of labor rights in 90 developing nations, from 1986 to 2002, highlights globalization's mixed impact on labor rights. As 'climb to the top' accounts suggest, foreign direct investment inflows are positively and significantly related to the rights of workers. But at the same time, trade competition generates downward 'race to the bottom' pressures on collective labor rights. The authors also find that domestic institutions and labor rights in neighboring countries are important correlates of workers' rights. Keywords: labor rights; multinational corporations; globalization; foreign direct investment

Companies, International Trade and Human Rights by Janet Dine. New York, Cambridge University Press, 2005. 354 pp. $90.00. Janet Dine provides a wide-ranging discussion of several issues related to economic [...]