Nina Bandelj

Embedded Economies: Social Relations as Determinants of Foreign Direct Investment in Central and Eastern Europe

Foreign direct investment (FDI) is considered a powerful catalyst in market transition. However, FDI flows vary greatly across Central and East European transition countries. I compare and contrast current approaches, which consider country characteristics as determinants of FDI, with a relational approach that emphasizes institutional, political, economic, and cultural connections between investor and host countries. Regression analyses of FDI flows in country dyads provide little evidence for the effects of country characteristics. Political, migration, trade, and cultural relations between investors and hosts have strong positive effects on FDI flows, and they add considerably to the proportion of the explained cross-national variance. These findings highlight the utility of a relational understanding of macroeconomic processes, as well as the importance of examining how substantively different social relations shape economic exchange.

Foreign Investment and Income Inequality The Natural Experiment of Central and Eastern Europe

How does foreign direct investment (FDI) affect income inequality? We bring evidence from the natural experiment of Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) to bear on a hotly debated topic. We begin by outlining the literature on the effect of FDI on income inequality, and the serious critiques offered by Firebaugh that raised doubt on previous research. We then discuss the ways in which CEE countries provide a natural experiment with which to contribute to this debate. We estimate a series of fixed effects regression models that relate income inequality to foreign investment and a baseline internal development model. We find that foreign investment has a robust positive effect on income inequality, net of unmeasured heterogeneity across cases, the internal development model, additional controls, and the critiques offered by Firebaugh. Further, we show that the effect is observable over the short term, no matter how FDI is measured. We conclude by directing attention to CEE countries as a historically unique opportunity to gauge the effect of exposure to the world economy on many development outcomes.

The Global Economy as Instituted Process : The Case of Central and Eastern Europe

I argue that economic globalization, indicated by the tremendous rise in world foreign direct investment (FDI) in recent decades, is not driven simply by investor considerations of economic risk and return, but is significantly shaped by the construction of demand for foreign capital by receiving states. States signal this demand through the levels of formal and substantive legitimacy they grant to FDI. They institutionalize globalization in formal rule as a normatively desirable development strategy. States substantiate this commitment by providing domestic and foreign actors with ideational and organizational resources to facilitate FDI. To illustrate this argument, I use the case of Central and Eastern Europe, which was largely closed to global capital before the collapse of Communism. Analyses of quantitative and qualitative data show that substantive legitimacy granted to FDI by host states, more than formal regulations, determined the size of foreign capital flows into postsocialist countries in the first decade of market reform. These findings point to social foundations of macroeconomic trends beyond the instrumental considerations of risk and return privileged in previous research.

Relational Work and Economic Sociology

This paper attempts to clarify the concept of relational work for understanding economic life as proposed by Viviana Zelizer. To do so, it first compares the concept to similar notions used in other disciplinary fields. Second, it reinterprets some exemplary economic sociology studies by using the relational work lens to clarify the concept’s utility for empirical analysis. Third, it speculates about the place of relational work in the theoretical toolkit of economic sociologists, in particular its relation to embeddedness. The paper concludes by arguing for the utility of the concept to integrate structural, cultural, and power-focused analyses of economic life, to highlight the often-overlooked role of emotions in economic exchange, and to ground an alternative to rational action theory in economic sociology.

How Method actors create character roles

This paper studies character-role creation by Method actors to begin developing a sociological understanding of artistic creativity and shed light on the construction of social roles. Portrayals on film or stage reflect but also importantly shape audiences understandings of social life. How do actors create these portrayals? The analysis of interviews with and observation of Method actors shows that they employ a variety of creation strategies, which are shaped by artistic conventions and transmitted in educational settings and professional interactions. Striving to create lifelike portrayals, actors draw heavily on culturally available images and end up reproducing existing typifications and cultural mores.

Negotiating Global, Regional, and National Forces: Foreign Investment in Slovenia

The article examines foreign investment in Slovenia to study the interplay between global investment flows, pressures from regional associations, and national protectionist efforts and resistance to foreign ownership. Using content analysis of policies and parliamentary debates, the author investigates how the newly established Slovenian state institutionalizes its attitudes toward the participation of foreigners in the national economy in the official policies adopted to regulate foreign investment. With case studies of foreign investment transactions, the author illustrates how foreign investment occurs in practice. The author finds that the Slovenian state officials negotiate the domestic and European Union pressures by sanctioning the decoupling between formal policies and economic practice. At the organizational level, economic actors involved in transactions negotiate the global and local interests by exploiting institutional nontransparency and differentiating between transaction partners on the basis of preexistent social relations and cultural affinities. Paying attention to the intersection between global, regional, and national forces, this study uncovers the social, cultural, and political bases of economic processes and the agency of local actors in responding to global and regional pressures.

Particularizing the Global: Reception of Foreign Direct Investment in Slovenia

Exploring the relationship between global forces and local practices, this article examines the reception of global investment flows in an East European transition country, Slovenia. Using content analysis of legal regulations and policies, the article investigates how global pressures impact the official foreign investment policy regime in Slovenia. Examples of foreign investment transactions illustrate economic practice. The analysis shows that yielding to the universalizing pressures of neoliberalism creates convergence in official foreign investment policies. In practice, however, economic actors involved in foreign investment transactions resist and particularize global processes on the basis of their network ties, political alliances and cultural affinities. Overall, the study emphasizes the social and political embeddedness of economic processes and substantiates how the decoupling of formal policies and local practices sustains the coexistence of uniformity and diversity.

Economic culture in the public sphere: Introduction

European Journal of Sociology http://journals.cambridge.org/EUR Additional services for European Journal of Sociology: Email alerts: Click here Subscriptions: Click here Commercial reprints: Click here Terms of use : Click here Economic Culture in the Public Sphere: Introduction Nina Bandelj, Lyn Spillman and Frederick F. Wherry European Journal of Sociology / Volume 56 / Issue 01 / April 2015, pp 1 - 10 DOI: 10.1017/S0003975615000016, Published online: 30 April 2015 Link to this article: http://journals.cambridge.org/abstract_S0003975615000016 How to cite this article: Nina Bandelj, Lyn Spillman and Frederick F. Wherry (2015). Economic Culture in the Public Sphere: Introduction. European Journal of Sociology, 56, pp 1-10 doi:10.1017/ S0003975615000016 Request Permissions : Click here Downloaded from http://journals.cambridge.org/EUR, IP address: 86.61.122.100 on 02 May 2015

Supraterritoriality, Embeddedness, or Both? Foreign Direct Investment in Central and Eastern Europe

Does the rise of foreign direct investment (FDI) in Central and Eastern Europe lead to supraterritoriality? The analysis of FDI flows between world investor countries and Central and East European (CEE) hosts between 1989 and 2000 shows that the majority of FDI flows into CEE in this period do not exemplify a trend of undifferentiated transcendence of post-communist borders. Rather, FDI flows continue to be based in territoriality and embedded in existing social relations between investor and host countries: migration and trade flows, historical ties, political alliances, and cultural affinities. Nevertheless, the rhetoric supporting the opening of post-communist countries to FDI is widespread and consistent with the neoliberal credo, which has acquired a supraterritorial character. Ultimately, we see that embeddedness and supraterritoriality co-exist but they manifest themselves for distinct FDI phenomena: the concrete economic practice and the economic rhetoric, respectively.

Economic Expectations of Young Adults

In uncertain economic times, who are those young adults that show positive expectations about their economic future? And who are those who worry? Based on previous stratification research and extending economic sociology insights into the realm of young people’s economic expectations, we focus on the impact of family class background and a sense of current meaningful community relations on young adults’ general and job-specific economic expectations. Analysis of Panel Study of Income Dynamics (PSID) data reveals that a sense of community belonging has a robust and positive impact on economic optimism of young adults, but the role of family socioeconomic background is weaker. We conclude that imagining one’s economic future is less about realistic calculation determined by early structural conditions but more about identity work of young people who assert their moral worth in how they imagine their economic lives and manage uncertainty and well-being in ongoing social relations.