M. Fabricio Perez

The Effect of Home‐country and Host‐country Corruption on Foreign Direct Investment

The effect of corruption on FDI is analysed. Using FDI outflows from a sample of East European transition economies that had virtually no outward FDI before 1995, FDI flows are observed based mainly on current investment decisions and less on the inertia of past investments. The model separates the effects of corruption on FDI location decisions and on the amount invested. A linear and negative relationship is found between host‐country corruption and the likelihood of MNCs locating in that country. The relationship between home‐country corruption and FDI is non‐monotonic, with an inverse U shape where both high and low levels of corruption in the home country reducing the probability of outward FDI flows. If FDI is undertaken to a host country, the volume of FDI is affected by home‐country but not by host‐country corruption.

Catering Through Nominal Share Prices Revisited

Finance research suggests that firms cater to investors’ time-varying preference for low-priced stocks by managing nominal share prices. We show that the existing empirical tests of such catering use highly persistent data that may lead to finding significant relations between variables that are actually independent (spurious regression bias). We revisit the catering hypothesis applying five estimation techniques that reduce the effects of data persistence. Adjusted for persistence, the data offer little evidence that stock splits respond to catering incentives. There is some, although mixed, evidence that catering incentives affect the firms’ choice of the post-split prices and the IPO prices.