A previous study suggests that U.S. Senators trade common stock with a substantial informational advantage compared to ordinary investors and even corporate insiders. We apply precisely the same methods to test for abnormal returns from the common stock investments of Members of the U.S. House of Representatives. We measure abnormal returns for more than 16,000 common stock transactions made by approximately 300 House delegates from 1985 to 2001. Consistent with the study of Senatorial trading activity, we find stocks purchased by Representatives also earn significant positive abnormal returns (albeit considerably smaller returns). A portfolio that mimics the purchases of House Members beats the market by 55 basis points per month (approximately 6% annually).

This paper investigates whether Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) decisions are influenced by state ownership. The literature has established that host country institutions affect FDI allocation, but there is no systematic evidence how state ownership affects such relationships. However, we expect that state ownership systematically affects the relation between host country institutions and FDI. Theoretical arguments indicate that state-owned enterprises (SOEs) should invest relatively more than privately owned enterprises (POEs) in countries with poor rule of law, poor property rights protection and a high degree of corruption. However, SOEs are expected to invest relatively less than POEs in dictatorships and countries with poor human rights protection. We test these hypotheses, using a new dataset on Norwegian firms' FDI from 1998 to 2006. The empirical analysis suggests that SOEs invest relatively more than POEs in countries with high level of corruption and weak rule of law. Indeed, SOEs' FDI appears not to be reduced by such institutional risk factors. However, there is no solid evidence indicating that SOEs invest more in democracies and countries with better human rights protection.

An extensive game lodge industry operates across Southern Africa. Many of these lodges market themselves as ‘eco-tourism destinations’ where wildlife protection, community development and the maintenance of bio-diversity are supposed to be central values of the business model. This article deals with the tensions that arise for the management of such enterprises between a multiplicity of local and global interests around land use pertaining to conflicting motivations of profitability and capital-intensive development, protection of bio-diversity and enabling community empowerment. The article illustrates the interplay between these competing interests, preferences and claims surrounding the use to which the land these lodges occupy is used. It examines a set of cases in South Africa with special reference to the Sabi Sand Private Game Reserve.

This paper proposes a theory of political action based upon ownership structure and tests this theory utilizing data on independent expenditures during the campaign finance regulatory regime consisting of the period after the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act of 2002 and before the U.S. Supreme Court's Citizens United decision in 2010. The results suggest a strong relationship between the presence of an entrepreneur or founding family and firm participation in electoral politics via contributions to independent political organizations. Both privately held and publicly traded firms with a principal owner present are more likely to contribute to independent political organizations in the first place, and once they do contribute, give a far greater amount relative to firms without a principal owner. The implications for the post-Citizens United era and possible motivations behind independent expenditures and their impact on other stakeholders including investors, employees, competitors, and the public are discussed. This paper contributes to our understanding of which corporate interests are most likely to spend money on electoral politics independent of the political party or candidate and seeks to broaden discourse about why these actors might participate in elections in the first place as well as the impact of their participation.