State ownership and transparency in foreign direct investment

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: Cannizzaro, Anthony P.; Weiner, Robert J.
• 署名单位: Catholic University of America; George Washington University
• 刊物名称: JOURNAL OF INTERNATIONAL BUSINESS STUDIES
• ISSN/ISSBN: 0047-2506
• DOI: 10.1057/s41267-017-0117-5
• 发表日期: 2018
• 页码: 172-195
• 关键词: State Ownership; TRANSPARENCY; voluntary disclosure; POLITICAL RISK; institutions

摘要

We contribute to IB literature on state-owned multinationals by examining an understudied element of MNE strategy - transparency. Drawing insight from accounting, finance, and political science, we develop theory and hypotheses regarding ownership effects on FDI disclosure. We argue that transparency of outward FDI depends on both state ownership and home and host country institutions. We also posit that host governments harness their SOEs to exploit information disclosed by foreign MNEs, discouraging inward FDI transparency. We test our hypotheses using a unique transaction-level database from the global petroleum industry. Analyzing a sample of 965 investment disclosures across 81 developing and developed countries, we find state ownership reduces MNE transparency; SOEs are less sensitive to host country political risk than private firms; SOEs from better-governed countries are more transparent; and regardless of ownership, foreign MNEs are more opaque when investing in the presence of a host country SOE.