Are some dictators more attractive to foreign investors?
Abel François  1@  , Laurent Weill  2, *@  , Sophie Panel * @
1 : Lille - Economie et Management  (LEM)  -  Site web
Université de Lille, Sciences et Technologies, Université de Lille, Sciences Humaines et Sociales, Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique : UMR9221, Université Catholique de Lille
2 : Laboratoire de recherche en gestion et économie  (LARGE)  -  Site web
université de Strasbourg : EA2364
Pôle européen de gestion (PEGE) 61, avenue de la Forêt -Noire 67085 STRASBOURG CEDEX -  France
* : Auteur correspondant

This study examines the impact of dictators' characteristics on FDI. We test the hypothesis that foreign investors scrutinize public information on leaders to assess the risk of expropriation in dictatorships. In particular, we assume they use three suitable dictators' characteristics: education level, education in economics and management, and prior experience in business. We perform fixed effects estimations to explain FDI inflows on an unbalanced panel of 100 dictatorial countries from 1973 to 2008. We find that educated dictators, dictators with education in economics and business experience are more attractive to foreign investors. Our results are robust to several tests and checks, notably when we compare them to counterfactual democratic nations. 


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