Krishna Vadlamannati

• University College Dublin

Employing newly available data on Chinese Covid-19 vaccine deliveries for a cross-section of 157 countries, we examine if China's vaccine diplomacy is driven by altruistic, enlightened self-interested motives or by purely strategic motives. According to the enlightened self-interested logic, China's vaccine supply would coincide with helping countr...

We investigate the fungibility of foreign aid, focusing on intergovernmental transfers in India. While anecdotal evidence suggests that the central government substitutes its fiscal transfers with earmarked foreign aid for state governments, empirical evidence is scant due to the complex procedure for states to accrue foreign aid. By Constitutional...

The question of foreign direct investment (FDI) and socio-political development is debated heavily. Liberals believe that FDI brings economic opportunities and/or increased incentives for peace and security among host societies. Critics suggest that FDI is exploitative, leading to conditions that increase the risk of violence. We take a political e...

China’s renewed prominence is the most important development in international relations in the 21st century. Despite longstanding rhetoric of its own “peaceful rise”, China is increasingly viewed as a long-term strategic competitor, especially in the United States. Foreign aid is one arena where this competition may be playing out. While Western fo...

How has public healthcare spending prepared countries for tackling the COVID-19 pandemic? Arguably, spending is the primary policy tool of governments for providing effective health. We argue that the effectiveness of spending for reducing COVID deaths is conditional on the existence of healthcare equity and lower political corruption because the h...

Do ethno-linguistic divisions in a country hamper the implementation of IMF-supported programs? We construct a new measure of implementation and compliance with IMF programs approved during the 1992–2014 period covering 104 countries. Using several measures of diversity, we find that higher levels of ethno-linguistic and cultural fractionalization...

Whether and how does the US react to China’s deployment of development finance for gathering allies from the developing world and even key Western partners that have contributed to sustaining the American-led liberal international order? We argue that Washington deploys dispositional balancing against Beijing by supporting projects of international...

Some blame free-market capitalism for increasing income inequality, arguing that richer classes could block access to others for maintaining their privileges. By manipulating the degree of political rights and resources available to others, the rich could reduce opportunities for others. Others argue that growth-promoting free markets raise all inc...

The emergence of China as a major development partner requires a reassessment of traditional donor–recipient dynamics. In addition to adopting new rhetoric like “South–South cooperation” or “Win–Win,” China has eschewed classifications and practices of the traditional donors of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development’s Developmen...

Aims The COVID-19 pandemic has led to a spate of studies showing a close connection between inequitable access to health care, welfare services and adverse outcomes from the pandemic. Others have argued that democratic governments have generally failed relative to more autocratic ones, simply because autocrats can make the hard choices required for...

Many scholars, particularly in public health, argue that neoliberal capitalist economic forces adversely affect communities by increasing inequalities, ultimately affecting health. Apparently, corporate capitalism affects health and communitarian concerns because governments place corporate profits over the publićs interests. Using unique data coll...

Revenue from oil makes countries susceptible to the “resource curse” since rulers have ready access to finance for buying off opposition rather than reform. We explore this issue by examining whether oil price volatility affects anti-government unrest. We argue that in oil-producing countries, low price years generate anti-government protest condit...

Questions of aid allocation have long focused on discerning the motivation of development donors. Less attention has been paid to the interests and agency of recipient state governments and even less to the interests and agency of constituencies within those states. An implicit assumption is often that the ‘poor’ either passively receive the patron...

The consequences of foreign direct investment (FDI) for human rights protection are poorly understood. We propose that the impact of FDI varies across industries. In particular, extractive firms in the oil and mining industries go where the resources are located and are bound to such investment, which creates a status quo bias among them when it co...

How has government healthcare spending prepared countries for tackling the COVID-19 pandemic? Arguably, spending is the primary policy tool of governments in providing effective health. We argue that the effectiveness of spending in reducing COVID deaths is conditional on the existence of healthcare equity and lower political corruption, because th...

Does international investor sentiment improve when a crises-ridden country participates in an International Monetary Fund (IMF) program? I argue that merely participating in an IMF program may not revive the sentiments of investors. Rather, investor sentiment would improve when governments enhance the credibility of their commitment to reforms by a...

Understanding why states voluntarily cede power to international institutions, and if those institutions fulfill their stated goals, remain a pressing question in international relations. In order to evaluate the material and normative logics that may drive this type of behavior, this paper considers state commitment to and compliance with the Spec...

Are left-wing governments in Latin America, as proclaimed by their leaders, really pro-labor? It is often argued that left-wing governments in Latin America have implemented pro-labor policies. In this paper we put these claims to an empirical test using 37 aspects of de facto (practices) and de jure (laws) violations of labor rights. Using panel d...

It is a commonly held view that democracy is better at safeguarding environment while autocracy is predatory in nature, and is thus insensitive towards environment. However, others argue that democracy leads to environmental degradation. We revisit this contentious relationship between regime type and environment degradation in the context of defor...

About 90 countries have adopted Freedom of Information (FOI) laws with the objective of facilitating citizens’ right to access information on government activities expeditiously. It is argued that FOI laws increase transparency and fix accountability of the government. We provide quantitative evidence on the impact of FOI laws on perceived governme...

Previous studies find that adopting Freedom of Information (FOI) laws increase reporting of corruption, as this facilitates the right of access to governmental information. Thus, it is argued that FOI laws increase transparency and enhance government accountability. However, whether or not adopting such transparency laws improves bureaucratic effic...

This paper extends political budget cycles theory to corruption, where an incumbent government considers controlling corruption based purely on political considerations. Using panel data on 30 Indian states during the 1988–2009 period, I investigate whether the timing of elections affects the incumbent government’s efforts to control corruption. Co...

Structural adjustment programs of the IMF are often blamed for disrupting social relations by forcing austerity on vulnerable people and introducing unpopular liberalization policies. Some suggest that such interventions harm ethnic relations in developing countries because they are insensitive to the tenuous social bargains that often preserve eth...

A much-debated issue regarding globalization is whether it translates into Free Association and Collective Bargaining (FACB) rights for workers. The author uses Dreher's (2006) globalization index, which gauges globalization on economic, social, and political dimensions, and Mosley's (2011) FACB rights index, which measures 37 aspects of both pract...

The Special Data Dissemination Standard (SDDS) initiative was launched by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) in 1996, to enhance the availability of timely and comprehensive macroeconomic and financial statistics based on best dissemination practices, facilitating the pursuit of sound macroeconomic policies. By joining this initiative, governmen...

We investigate whether lending by the Islamic Development Bank mirrors Saudi Arabia’s political interests based on religious affinity using panel data for its 56 member countries over the 1970 to 2007 period. Our results indicate that Sunni regime countries receive favorable treatment in terms of loan allocation, as well as Shia majority populated...

Do countries compete for FDI by liberalizing policies favoring FDI? Our measure of policies favoring FDI is an event count of changes made by a country in a given year in the arena of approval procedures, sectoral restrictions, operational conditions, incentives, investment guarantees, foreign exchange, and corporate regulations to attract FDI. Usi...

The global economic downturn has heightened concerns about intervention by global financial institutions and political stability. One prominently-published article purports to show that signing on to an IMF structural adjustment program (SAP) increases the risk of civil war, Hartzell et al. (International Organization 64:339–56, 2010). The authors...

We empirically assess the determinants of India’s FDI outflows across a large sample of host countries in the 1996–2009 period. Based on gravity model specifications, we employ Poisson pseudo maximum likelihood (PPML) estimators. Major findings include: India’s outward FDI is hardly affected by motives to access raw materials or superior technologi...

We empirically assess the determinants of India’s FDI outflows across a large sample of host countries in the 1996-2009 period. Based on gravity model specifications, we employ Poisson pseudo maximum likelihood (PPML) estimators. Major findings include: India’s outward FDI is hardly affected by motives to access raw materials or superior technologi...

It is puzzling that India, which has a large domestic constituency of people suffering from underdevelopment, chronic poverty and mal-governance, is emerging as an important aid donor. With the intension of understanding why poor countries provide foreign aid, this article is the first to econometrically analyze India’s aid allocation decisions. Fi...

The Anti-trafficking Protocol reflects the interests of the major countries. Due to the high costs of compliance, countries will strategically select those obligations that will satisfy the major countries most efficiently with lower costs of compliance. Among the three main obligations of the Protocol – prevention, protection and prosecution – we...

Do countries compete for FDI by liberalizing their FDI policy regimes? Our measure of FDI policy liberalization is an event count of changes made by a country in a given year in the areas of approval procedures, sectoral restrictions, operational conditions, incentives, investment guarantees, foreign exchange, and corporate regulations to attract F...

India’s rapid economic growth over the last decade has been coupled with a Maoist insurgency that competes with the state for rural allegiance. In response to the threat, the Government of India has securitized development, using public works programmes in an attempt to sway locals away from Maoist allegiance. However, these areas are also home to...

Unlike previous studies on political risk and FDI which use macro-level FDI data to test micro-level theories, I make use of aggregate data on US firms' investment activities in 101 developing countries during the period 1997 – 2007 to reassess the propositions. Using a multilevel mixed-effects linear instrumental variable approach, I find that low...

This paper investigates the effects of multinational corporations on labor standards. We argue that the previous literature has failed to distinguish the different motives that encourage firms to become multinational. Therefore, we build a stylized model of segmented labor markets with equilibrium unemployment where parts of the labor force are wil...

Armed conflicts have been a permanent feature of the northeastern region since Indian independence. Surprisingly, relentless conflicts in this remote region of India have received little attention in the literature. Although some studies on conflicts in India have made important contributions to understanding and analyzing the causes of conflicts i...

The decisions of foreign investors on technical cooperation versus equity engagements and on the degree of ownership in FDI projects are likely to depend on their relative bargaining position vis-à-vis the host country. India provides an interesting case for analyzing the interplay between country-of origin-characteristics and host-country-characte...

The relationship between globalization and economic growth, especially in the poorer developing countries, is controversial. Previous studies have used single globalization indicators such as the ratio of exports plus imports to GDP. This paper uses a comprehensive measure of a globalization of Dreher (2006), which is based on measures of globaliza...

Many studies have estimated the growth effects of globalization where globalization was measured with a few economic variables, ignoring its social and political dimensions. Recently, Dreher (2006) has developed a comprehensive measure of globalization with several variables from the economic, political and social sectors. He showed, with the panel...

Liberals argue that globalization, or growing interdependence among states, will transform societies towards more liberal values reflected in better respect for human rights. Skeptics of globalization, among them Marxists, critical theorists, and a large portion of the NGO community, see globalization facilitating the exploitation of the weak by th...

Among the many concerns over globalization is that as nations compete for mobile firms, they will relax labour standards as a method of lowering costs and attracting investment. Using spatial estimation on panel data for 148 developing countries over 18 years, we find that the labour standards in one country are positively correlated with the labou...

In the extended Solow growth model of Mankiw et al. (19924. Mankiw , N. G. , Romer , D. and Weil , D. N. 1992. A contribution to the empirics of economic growth. Quarterly Journal of Economics, 107: 407–37. [CrossRef], [Web of Science ®]View all references), human capital has only permanent level and no growth effects. In the endogenous growth m...

Theoretical and empirical literatures have identified several channels through which foreign direct investment (FDI) influences economic growth. This paper examines the impact of FDI on economic output growth per worker using aggregate production function augmented with FDI inflows, economic policy reforms and institutional constraints. The paper c...

This paper examines how political institutions and election outcomes have affected the economic reform process in the post-communist transition countries. The analysis is based on panel data estimations using annual data for 26 transition economies for 1992-2006. Among political institutions, democratisation has been conducive to economic reforms,...

The unprecedented emergence of a country as large as India in the South Asian region raises the issue of how it will affect neighbouring economies in terms of attracting FDI inflows. Do huge FDI inflows of India lead to ‘investment creating effect’ or otherwise for its neighbours? If so, is this positive impact conditioned by local economic reforms...

In the recent past the US has emerged as one of the top three important trading partners for India (both in terms of Indian exports to and Imports from US). In terms of both its imports and exports, US play a major role. Over the years, the trade between US and India was very much restricted. This was mainly due to India’s proximity towards the for...

The objective of this paper is to identify and examine the determinants of barriers to foreign direct investment (FDI) in South East Asian economies. Based on our theoretical groundings, we identify potential barriers under four categories, namely macroeconomic policy factors, political factors, institutional factors and socioeconomic factors. Usin...

The relationship between military spending and human rights is one of the most prominent issues in political economy. Yet, the linkage between the two is empirically underdeveloped. Seeking to fulfill this existing gap in the literature, we examine the effects of militarization on human rights performance in six South Asian economies for the period...

A vast number of studies addressed the environmental degradation and economic development but not financial development. Moreover, as argued by Stern [2004. The rise and fall of the environmental Kuznets curve. World Development 32, 1419–1439] they present important econometric weaknesses. Using standard reduced-form modeling approach and controlli...

The relationship between military spending and human rights is one of the most prominent issues in political economy. Yet, the linkage between the two is empirically underdeveloped. Seeking to fulfill this existing gap in the literature, we examine the effects of militarization on human rights performance in six South Asian economies for the period...

This paper provides a survey on studies that analyze the macroeconomic effects of intellectual property rights (IPR). The first part of this paper introduces different patent policy instruments and reviews their effects on R&D and economic growth. This part also discusses the distortionary effects and distributional consequences of IPR protection a...

The paper uses unique aggregate industry-level dataset at subnational level from India to measure the effects of foreign investments on the productivity of domestic firms. Using pooled regression analysis with fixed effects for the period 2002 – 2005, we find that: (a) foreign investments have significant positive effect on productivity of domestic...

This paper uses a new specification and approach to estimate the effects of financial developments on the steady state rate of growth of output in India, Malaysia, Korea, Thailand and the Philippines for the period 1970 to 2006. These growth effects, though small, are found to be significant except for the Philippines. The trend rate of growth of t...

The paper investigates whether the decline in environmental quality in BRIC economies is due to high energy consumption level which is a resultant of rapid economic growth. We answer this using environmental, macroeconomic and financial variables along with Kyoto Protocol indicators based on panel data from 1992 to 2004.

This paper provides a survey on studies that analyze the macroeconomic effects of intellectual property rights (IPR). The first part of this paper introduces different patent policy instruments and reviews their effects on R&D and economic growth. This part also discusses the distortionary effects and distributional consequences of IPR protection a...

This paper shows that increases in the minimum wage rate can have ambiguous effects on the working hours and welfare of employed workers in competitive labor markets. The reason is that employers may not comply with the minimum wage legislation and instead pay a lower subminimum wage rate. If workers are risk neutral, we prove that working hours an...

I modify the uniform-price auction rules in allowing the seller to ration bidders. This allows me to provide a strategic foundation for underpricing when the seller has an interest in ownership dispersion. Moreover, many of the so-called "collusive-seeming" equilibria disappear.

Previous Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) research on India largely focused on examining the determinants of inward FDI. Very limited research has examined the country-of-origin factors of FDI in India. In this paper, we provide the first empirical test of a multidimensional, country-of-origin model of factors related to FDI and Foreign Technical Co...

The relationship between globalization and economic growth in the developing countries remains controversial. Liberals argue that globalization will lead to higher economic growth and prosperity. Skeptics contend the opposite, where globalization processes might lead to increased inequality and lower economic growth. Previous studies have examined...

In the extended Solow growth model of Mankiw, Romer and Weil (1992) human capital has only permanent level and no growth effects. In the endogenous growth models human capital is a growth improving variable. Human capital may have both a permanent level and a permanent growth effect. We show, with data from India, that both the level and growth eff...

India is a complex federal democracy where state level politics are dominated by state specific issues rather than national issues, making the economic development of the respective states the focal point of a potential electorate. As economic reforms are now driven by the states, due to the withdrawal of controls exercised by central government in...

the issue of how it will affect neighboring economies interms of attracting FDI inflows. Does huge FDI inflows of India lead to ëinvestment creating effectí or otherwise for its neighbors? If so, do FDI inflows in India exploit the economic reforms process and thereby affect other economies in the region? In this paper, we explore these issues empi...