Suchergebnisse

Abstract
Do foreign firms engage in domestic politics, and if so, why? I argue that foreign firms, impacted by US policies, employ subsidiaries in the US to represent their political interests in federal elections. Using original data collected for the population of corporate givers during the 2014 and 2016 election cycles, I find US subsidiaries of foreign firms to be significantly more politically active than similarly sized American firms located in the same industry. These subsidiaries are much more likely to sponsor a Political Action Committee and donate in greater amounts. I explore a variety of explanations for this disproportionate political activity, and demonstrate that it is driven in part by the foreign parent firms' desire to gain a political foothold in the United States. Foreign direct investment therefore serves as an investment in political influence.

AbstractHow much of lobbying activities disclosed under the Lobbying Disclosure Act (LDA) actually represent foreign clients? What are their interests? By identifying the global ultimate owners of all corporate clients filing with the LDA, I find that majority‐owned subsidiaries of foreign multinational corporations (MNCs) account for nearly 20% of corporate lobbying spending in 2015–2016. This amount is comparable to the entire foreign lobbying spending reported under the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA). Domestic subsidiaries of foreign MNCs are also found to lobby more frequently and spend more lobbying than American multinationals, after controlling for firm size, industry, and PAC contributions. These subsidiaries actively lobby on issue areas that clearly benefit their foreign parents. The findings suggest that foreign MNCs may actively influence U.S. policies through their domestic subsidiaries, and that the FARA captures only part of foreign lobbying in the United States.

Abstract
This paper examines the effect of a new maximum work hour restriction introduced in South Korea in 2018 that limited maximum working hours from 68 h/week to 52 h/week. I use difference-in-differences analysis with continuous treatment measuring the prevalence of those working longer than 52 h/week prior to the policy change across industry-occupation-education groups. I find that the policy reduces work hours while increasing monthly earnings and hourly wages for male full-time workers. However, I find that the policy does not significantly affect total work hours, total employment, and total worker pay at the industry-occupation-education group level.

Do US lobbying patterns extend to other countries? To date no study has systematically compared US lobbying patterns with those of other countries using observational data. Taking advantage of similar lobbying disclosure rules in the US and Canada, we create a cross-country lobbying dataset. We focus on the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA) to control for timing, salience, and issue scope. This helps us attribute differences in firm mobilization and trade lobbying strategies across the two countries to differences in political institutions. Strikingly different USMCA lobbying patterns emerge. Within the same industry, trade associations, the executive branch, and in-house lobbyists play a larger role in Canada. Meanwhile, well-established determinants of US lobbying fail to explain patterns of mobilization and the use of external lobbyists in Canada. These findings provide insights into comparative lobbying studies and indicate that some stylized facts about lobbying are unique features of the US political system.

AbstractFirms that offshore final production should oppose trade barriers "protecting" their own industry. This pits them against onshore firms, especially when comparative disadvantage is most pronounced, and so fundamentally alters trade policy coalitions. The US-China trade war's exclusion process, where US firms could request that tariffs not be applied to a product, provides a golden opportunity to test this contention. We show that coverage by a tariff in the trade war and firm characteristics associated with offshoring—size, multinationality, and heavy imports from China—interacted to generate firm requests for exclusion from the trade war's tariffs. This finding is robust to input-sourcing and fears of export retaliation as alternative explanations, and across multiple measures of firm size, tariff coverage, and exclusion requests. We therefore test a key piece of the firm-centered model of trade politics and show its value in interpreting the US-China trade war.