| The dissertation presents three essays in the subject of international relations. The first essay considers the demise of expropriation. Since the late 1980s, incidences of expropriation, wherein a host government forces the divestment of foreign-owned assets, have all but disappeared. Existing empirical analyses and formal models of expropriation neither account for, nor anticipate, this decline. Using insights from the real options literature in finance, the paper conceives of forced divestment as a call option and explains the decline of expropriation through an understanding of the option pricing framework. Specifically, the paper argues that a rise in the strike price (i.e., the cost of forcing divestment) has pushed the expropriation option significantly "out of the money" for developing countries. After reviewing the existing literature, the paper updates the empirical record on expropriation through 2003, introduces a one period binomial option pricing model and explains the sustained demise of forced divestment in the 1990s and thereafter.; The second essay considers the interaction between non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and firms. As an early step in an emerging research program, the paper explores the different ways in which firms manage NGO protest and highlights the importance of ownership structure as an explanatory variable. Specifically, the paper contends that family owned or controlled firms are more likely than non-family owned firms to take costly steps with respect to NGOs and activists. The family firm's ownership structure influences its ability to preempt and manage activism, and, at least in certain cases, the family's reputational sensitivity explains its willingness to do so. That is, decision-making autonomy and the family firm's heightened sensitivity to reputational harm directly influence how the firm manages NGO activism. The paper offers a preliminary test of the hypothesis through a comparison of two global apparel firms, Levi Strauss & Company and Nike.; The third essay considers the relationship between domestic human rights conditions and foreign direct investment (FDI). In the absence of rigorous and explicit theorizing, existing research ignores industry variation and simply considers the relationship between aggregate FDI and physical integrity rights. This approach overlooks rich theoretical ground and produces inconsistent empirical results. In an effort to improve on extant scholarship, the paper considers variation in the nature of a firm's underlying assets. In particular, the paper suggests that site specific assets serve as vulnerable and valuable targets for citizen protest. At the same time, such assets typically produce profits for the firm and significant economic output for the state. The potential for human rights abuses lies in the conflict that results when governments and citizens clash over economically meaningful site specific assets. The paper offers a preliminary evaluation of the argument through a careful consideration of four cases. |
