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How do domestic and global factors shape governments' capacity to issue debt in primary capital markets? Consistent with the 'democratic advantage', we identify domestic institutional mechanisms, including executive constraints and policy transparency, that facilitate debt issuance rather than electoral events. Most importantly, we argue that the democratic advantage is contingent: investors' attention to domestic politics varies with conditions in global capital markets. When global financial liquidity is low, investors are risk-averse, and political risk constrains governments' capacity to borrow. But when global markets are flush, investors are risk-tolerant and less sensitive to political risk. We support our argument with new data on 245,000 government bond issues in primary capital markets – the point at which governments' costs of market access matter most – for 131 sovereign issuers (1990–2016). In doing so, we highlight the role of systemic factors, which are under-appreciated in much 'open economy politics' research, in determining access to capital markets. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The rise of populism across advanced industrial countries presents a challenge to the institutions and norms that make up the current global order and threatens to undo the global system that has enabled decades of free trade and investment. We outline in this paper a domestic political economy account of the contemporary crisis of the global order, rooted in disenchantment with the redistributive bargain between globalization's winners and losers. We present individual and local-level evidence that is consistent with this account, first documenting the decline of the embedded liberal compromise over the past 40 years in Europe, and then providing individual-level evidence from the United States of growing protectionism and xenophobia in response to import exposure, particularly among respondents whose occupational profile is most risk-exposed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A growing number of developed country governments link good governance, including human rights, to developing countries' access to aid, trade, and investment. We consider whether governments enforce these conditions sincerely, in response to rights violations, or whether such conditions might instead be used as a veil for protectionist policies, motivated by domestic concerns about import competition. We do so via an examination of the world's most important unilateral trade preference program, the US Generalized System of Preferences (GSP), which includes worker rights as one criterion for program access. We argue that the two-tiered structure of the GSP privileges some domestic interests at one level, while disadvantaging them at the other. Using a new data set on all US GSP beneficiary countries and sanctioning measures from 1986 to 2013, we demonstrate that labor rights outcomes play a role in the maintenance of country-level trade benefits and that import competition does not condition the application of rights-based criteria at this level. At the same, however, the US government does not consider worker rights in the elements (at the country-product level) of the program that have the greatest material impact. The result is a situation in which the US government talks somewhat sincerely at the country level in its rights-based conditionality, but its behavior at the country-product level cheapens this talk. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: Under what conditions does the global economy serve as a means for the diffusion of labor standards and practices? We anticipate variation among internationally engaged firms in their propensity to improve labor standards. Upgrading is most likely when a firm's products exhibit significant cross‐market differences in markups, making accessing high‐standards overseas markets particularly profitable. Additionally, upgrading is more likely when lead firms attach a high salience to labor standards. Therefore, while participation in global production induces “trading up” behaviors among firms overall, the effect strength varies across industries. We test our expectations via a survey experiment, which queries foreign firms operating in Vietnam about their willingness to invest in labor‐related upgrading. We find strong evidence for the effect of markups on upgrading choices and suggestive evidence for the saliency mechanism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

I consider the effect of global supply chain production – in contrast to directly owned overseas production – for labour rights in low- and middle-income countries. I develop a set of hypotheses regarding the conditions under which supply chain workers are most likely to experience improvements in their working conditions and procedural rights. In doing so, I highlight the importance of host country governments in the protection of labour rights: while private governance efforts have intensified in recent years, their success is conditional on local political actors’ interests in the protection of workers’ rights. Put differently, appropriate protections for labour require that the incentives of participating firms (foreign or domestic) and host country governments align. I also suggest how future research might best explore these dynamics, by focusing its attention at the firm and supply chain (rather than at the country) level. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The article discusses how issues like labor rights, labor unions and trade policies affects the global supply chain and also how they affect the economic relationship between the developed and developing countries. Topics include how globalization and technological changes affects factors like forced labor and child labor, and the how multinational firms affect local economies, labor and their wages.

In the field of international political economy, workers are commonly analyzed as objects of global economic forces whose fate is determined by the profit-seeking behaviors of firms and governments. Workers, however, can also assert themselves to protect their rights, and they can emigrate to other countries to find employment. We analyze the literature on the nexus between the international economy and labor with a focus on workers on both the receiving and originating ends of global finance. Beginning with workers as inputs in multinational production, we explore the roles of economic openness, factor endowments, government policy, and unionization as drivers of workers' rights. We then shift to workers as migrant labor and explore the impact of migrants' own cross-border financial transfers-also known as remittances-on political outcomes in their home countries. Our overview not only highlights tremendous progress in explaining the agency and vulnerability of labor in the global economy but also reveals significant weaknesses in recent research, especially a mismatch between micro-level theorizing and macro-level data analysis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Summary This paper investigates how foreign aid inflows moderate bilateral trade-based pressures on the exporting countries’ labor rights. Because aid provides additional resources to recipient governments, it reduces the importance aid-recipient governments attach to the preferences of their export partners. Consequently, aid inadvertently moderates the leverage exercised by importing countries on the governments of exporting, developing countries. Our analysis of a panel of 91 aid recipient countries for the period 1985–2002 lends support to the “revenue substitution” hypothesis. When aid levels are low, bilateral trade-based pressures are associated with improved labor rights. As aid levels rise, however, the effect loses significance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores the role of moral entrepreneurship--activism by normatively focused groups, often acting nationally as well as transnationally--in labor rights activism. We focus specifically on activism related to US preferential trade agreements (PTAs). We explore how labor-related provisions have made their way into these agreements and how their inclusion has changed over time. Our main focus is on the efforts of interest groups to lobby US policymakers regarding various US PTAs. We discuss whether these lobbying efforts are cast in material or moral terms. In considering several PTAs during the 1990s and 2000s, we find that most efforts are based on material claims, or on a combination of material and moral concerns. We rarely observe lobbying activities that are cast purely in terms of the normative goal of protecting workers' rights. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores the effort, during the last decade, to develop a set of global standards and codes to govern international capital markets. I posit that, despite global capital market pressures, this effort should have limited success in low and middle-income countries. Drawing upon a historical institutionalist framework, I suggest that domestic political institutions, as well as interests, often will lead to the failure of governments to implement global codes and standards. After describing briefly the motivations for and substance of the standards and code project, I summarize trends in the national implementation of such standards. I then point to several instances of policy feedback, in which the existing domestic regulatory institutions in middle-income countries rendered the adoption of new international rules difficult, technically as well as politically. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article investigates the nature of the linkages between trade and labor rights in developing countries. Specifically, we hypothesize that a “California effect” serves to transmit superior labor standards from importing to exporting countries, in a manner similar to the transmission of environmental standards. We maintain that, all else being equal, the labor standards of a given country are influenced not by its overall level of trade openness, but by the labor standards of its trading partners. We evaluate our hypothesis using a panel of 90 developing countries over the period 1986–2002, and we separately examine the extent to which the labor laws and the actual labor practices of the countries are influenced by those of their export destinations. We find that strong legal protections of collective labor rights in a country's export destinations are associated with more stringent labor laws in the exporting country. This California effect finding is, however, weaker in the context of labor rights practices, highlighting the importance of distinguishing between formal legislation and actual implementation of labor rights. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The authors discuss how the global financial crisis could affect research in the international political economy (IPE) discipline. They suggest that IPE research may begin to focus on differences between domestic financial regulations in different countries, the participation of emerging-market nations in global regulatory bodies such as the G20 and ways that financial firms can affect economic policies.

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. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Explores the extent to which the nation-state specifically, the modern welfare state, marked by intervention and publicly-provided social protection citing its compatibility with economic globalization. Role of transnational actors, including multinational corporations, institutional investors, banks and non-governmental organizations in national policy-making; Economic globalization and national government policies.

This article explores the conditions under which international financial standards succeed. While rationalist accounts treat the successful creation of international standards as a relatively straightforward exercise, I suggest otherwise. The cooperation of private sector agents is a necessary condition for successful standards, and this cooperation hinges on certain elements of institutional design. Using an assessment of the IMF's Special Data Dissemination Standard (SDDS), I explore issues of institutional design and effectiveness. On the basis of surveys of mutual fund managers and government officials, I argue that because the private sector has yet to become involved fully in the promulgation of the SDDS, the SDDS effort has not yet achieved its goals. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Global capital markets can react dramatically to elections in developing countries, affecting governments' access to finance and sometimes setting off broader crises. We argue, contrary to some conventional wisdom, that investors do not systematically react to the election of left-leaning parties and candidates. Government ideology is often an imprecise heuristic, given the diversity in policies among parties, especially those on the left. We therefore expect that neither elections generally, nor elections that produce specific partisan outcomes, are associated with significant changes in sovereign financing costs. Yet we also predict that the election of left-leaning parties will generate volatility in sovereign bond markets, reflecting investors' uncertainty over future policy outcomes. This volatility is especially pronounced when new governments take office; over time, however, government policy performance enables investors to make increasingly precise estimates of political risk. Volatility has implications for the real economy, as well as for governments' ability to manage their debt. We test, and find support for, our core expectations using monthly data on sovereign bond spreads and credit default swap prices for 74 developing countries from 1994–2015. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We assess how investors evaluate sovereign borrowers, arguing that sovereign risk is less 'sovereign' than previous research assumes. Investors evaluate governments based not only on what they do, but also on investors' views of similar, 'peer' countries. Professional investors use investment categorizations (geography, sovereign credit rating, or level of market development) as a heuristic device. As a result, peer country effects, as well as country-specific and global factors (booms, crises, or shocks), should explain sovereign interest rates. The peer effects we expect are regular features of international capital markets, rather than phenomena that occur in periods of market turmoil. We assess our expectations using error correction models of monthly sovereign risk premiums, which reveal significant interdependencies in sovereign risk assessments among countries, net of global and domestic predictors. Such contagion emerges principally in the short term, although we also find robust, long-term ties in sovereign risk assessments among countries sharing common regional classifications. Hence, our evidence suggests that professional investors' reliance on country categorizations facilitates the transmission of market sentiments-which include lower as well as higher risk premiums charged-across groups of countries, even when countries differ in key measures of creditworthiness. Our analyses highlight the importance of investors' ideas regarding country categorizations; they call into question the efficiency of sovereign debt markets. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]