Intellectual property provisions and support for US trade agreements

Intellectual property rights are a key piece of the expanded trade agenda, and the United States has pushed hard to strengthen protections beyond WTO standards in its trade agreements. While agreement provisions governing intellectual property are commonly thought to be an important driver of corporate preferences over US trade policy, systematic empirical evidence for this proposition, especially in comparison to other determinants of trade policy, is generally lacking. To fill this void, this paper examines variation in reliance on intellectual property across US industries to explain attitudes and lobbying on US trade agreements. The effects of IP provisions on support for US trade agreements are politically substantial, though trade remains the primary determinant of preferences over trade agreements.     

Good for some,bad for others: US investors and non-trade issues in preferential trade agreements

Preferential trade agreements (PTAs) trigger investment through their commitment to a liberal market economy. Increasingly however, PTAs go far beyond liberalizing trade and investment flows. Especially controversial features included in most modern PTAs are environmental and labor standards. Do these standards affect business activity? If so, how do investors react to such non-trade issues in trade deals? The literature provides inconclusive findings about the impact of standards on foreign direct investment (FDI). Some contributors argue that strict standards decrease FDI, whilst others claim that environmental and labor protection increases productivity and, in consequence, inward investment. In all likelihood, the usage of aggregated FDI data, as is the case for most studies, causes confusion. I expect standards to influence investors’ decisions – but heterogeneously across sectors. Environmental and labor standards should reduce FDI in polluting and low-skilled labor endowed industries, but increase investment in environmentally clean and high-skilled labor abundant sectors. Based on an original dataset of environmental and social standards in trade agreements and at the sector-level disaggregated US-FDI data, I find robust support for my argument. The paper provides a more nuanced picture on the standards and investment nexus: Standards have no uniform effect on multinationals. Instead, they are good for some, but bad for other industries.     

The EU Global Strategy in a Transitional International Order

This article explores the prospects for the EU’s role as a global leader in a transitional international order, based on the assumption that multilateral principles will remain at the heart of global governance. It focuses in particular upon the EU’s 2016 Global Strategy in the context of three principal trends and challenges for global governance: political and normative challenges, legitimacy challenges, and systemic challenges. It argues that the prospects for the EU’s global role are limited as long as the EU remains committed to traditional forms and norms of global governance, because these are increasingly out of touch with the emerging international order, and the nature of contemporary collective action challenges.     

The Shifting Framing Strategies and Policy Positions of the Bloque Nacionalista Galego

This article asks why, in contrast to other historic territories with a regional language, such as Catalonia and the Basque Country, nationalist parties in the Autonomous Community of Galicia receive less electoral support. Going beyond prior explanations of this counterintuitive political outcome, which were mainly based on economic, sociological, and institutional factors, this piece of research sheds light on the strategies of political parties. It examines not only nationalist forces but statewide ones that successfully compete in Galicia. Our analysis is focused on the Bloque Nacionalista Galego (BNG) because this is the only nationalist force that has consistently achieved representation within the regional Parliament. Along with BNG's translation into party positions in both the left-right and center-periphery dimensions, the article's main contribution is its updating of the BNG's three framing strategies: the nationalism/“Spanishism” (1982–1993), the “common project” discourse (1993–2005), and the sovereigntist one (2005 onward). Shifts in public opinion regarding the territorial model and other attitudes toward self-government are also examined.     

Consequences of Forced Residential Relocation: Early Impacts of Urban Renewal Strategies on Forced Relocatees’ Housing Opportunities and Socioeconomic Outcomes

Policymakers have actively pursued urban renewal and dispersal programs to deconcentrate poverty in urban neighborhoods. Relocation strategies lead to new housing opportunities and may encourage employment opportunities for relocated residents if resourceful contacts and job information become more easily available after the move. This study provides an innovative evaluation of the early impacts of involuntary relocation programs in the Netherlands on the housing careers, earnings and employment rates of forced relocatees. It establishes a quasi-experimental design by employing unique longitudinal individual-level population registry data from Statistics Netherlands: forced relocatees are tracked and matched to a control group consisting of similar residents that were not forced to move. A difference-in-difference design shows that forced relocatees are living in less deprived neighborhoods after the move. However, we find no conclusive evidence that this upgrade in housing leads to more socioeconomic opportunities for the forced relocatees.