Prof. Jacque Gao’s recent article "Less is more: Property rights and dictators' demand for foreign direct investment", is recently published in the Review of International Organizations, a leading journal in the field of international relations.

Link:
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11558-024-09583-y

About the research

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Past studies in political economy have established a link between domestic property rights protection and foreign direct investment (FDI) inflows. However, the underlying mechanism remains unclear, given that foreign investors often enjoy more robust property rights protection through international arbitration under investment treaties or potential intervention by their home governments. This article develops a demand-side theory of how domestic property rights affect the flow of FDI into authoritarian regimes. Specifically, dictators with weaker property rights can extract more rents through restrictive FDI policies due to their greater ability to expropriate domestic enterprises than foreign ones. As competition from foreign investors decreases domestic firms’ profits, these dictators tend to impose stricter FDI regulations to maximize rent extraction, despite the potential benefits of FDI for regime stability through wage increases. Therefore, the relationship between domestic property rights and FDI is driven by dictators’ demand, even if foreign investors’ supply remains constant. This article advances our understanding of the determinants of economic liberalization and the effects of FDI in authoritarian regimes.

Prof. Jacque Gao is the first and corresponding author of the article.

About the Journal

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The Review of International Organizations is a leading journal in the field of international relations, with an average five-year impact factor of 6.9 in 2023. Its editorial team includes prominent scholars in the field, including James Raymond Vreeland of Princeton University, Axel Dreher of University of Heidelberg, David A. Lake of University of California, and B. Peter Rosendorff of New York University.

About Prof. Jacque Gao

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Prof. Jacque Gao is an Assistant Professor in the School of Humanities and Social Science at The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Shenzhen. Prof. Gao's research interests span two subfields of international relations. His first line of research focuses on topics at the intersection of international political economy and comparative political economy, with a particular emphasis on understanding how a dictator's survival strategies interact with the changing global economic environment. His second line of research focuses on topics related to interstate conflict, with a particular emphasis on understanding how various domestic and international factors cause conflict. His research has been published in leading journals in political science, including International Organization, The Review of International Organizations, Journal of Theoretical Politics, and Social Choice and Welfare. Prior to joining CUHK-ShenZhen, Prof. Gao was an Assistant Professor in the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore.