Though the prospective relationship between foreign direct investment (FDI) and human rights has long been a prominent issue within the global political economy, the linkage is empirically underdeveloped. Rather, the conventional wisdom that FDI and respect for human rights are inherently contradictory has persisted. Instead, we posit that respect for human rights may encourage FDI. To examine this issue, we assess the direct effects of human rights upon FDI as well as the extent to which human rights indirectly affects FDI through its impact upon human capital. Using a system of simultaneous equations, we find respect for human rights to have a positive impact upon FDI.

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During the Cold War, U.S. foreign policy was dominated by the strategic goal to contain Communism. Human rights and democracy were of secondary importance. In the post‐Cold War period, the promotion of human rights and democracy as foreign policy concerns rose in prominence. In the spirit of Andrew Pierre, who once characterized arms transfers as “foreign policy writ large,” this study questions whether the transfer of U.S. arms mirrors America's foreign policy goals. To what extent do U.S. arms transfers reflect a concern for human rights and democracy? As a foreign policy instrument, do U.S. arms transfer patterns mark a transition between Cold War and post‐Cold War worlds? To address these questions, I examine the empirical linkage between U.S. foreign policy goals and arms export agreements with developing countries for the years 1981–2002. I use a two‐stage model to evaluate the decision‐making process. The first‐stage addresses whether a country is eligible to receive U.S. arms. If a country successfully passes through the selection stage, it progresses to the second stage where a decision is made about the amount of arms transferred. I use a Heckman model to estimate empirically the determinants of arms at both the initial selection stage and the subsequent amount stage. The findings indicate that during the Cold War years, human rights were not a significant determinant of arms transfers—although democracy was positively linked to U.S. arms in the selection stage. In the post‐Cold War period, both human rights and democracy had a meaningful impact in determining the eligibility of a country to receive arms.

While there is a considerable degree of consensus about the economic determinants of foreign direct investment (FDI), the role of socio-political factors has only recently come under scrutiny. In this study, we build upon research on one such factor, human rights. Specifically, whereas extant research into FDI examines aggregate investment indices, we seek to disaggregate the analysis of FDI to further assess the role of human rights, namely physical integrity rights, in investment decisions. As FDI is a heterogeneous enterprise, we posit that the importance of human rights varies in part due to the nature of the industrial sector. In particular, two factors that vary across industrial sectors-skill requirements and the degree to which societal acceptance or ''social license'' is sought-likely increase the salience of human rights concerns in investment decisions. To empirically assess these linkages, we analyze U.S. FDI across 10 different sectors. We find human rights to be a significant determinant of FDI across sectors that value higher skills and integration within the host society.

What effect do International Monetary Fund (IMF) and World Bank programs have on collective labor rights? Labor rights advocacy networks and organized labor groups have long been critical of neoliberal policy prescriptions attached to loans by international financial institutions (IFIs), claiming that they harm the interests of workers. IFIs dispute these claims, noting that they work with relevant labor organizations and that many of their arrangements call for compliance with core labor standards. Yet very little research has been devoted to whether IFI programs affect labor laws and the actual labor practices of recipient countries. We argue that IFI programs undermine collective labor rights. Specifically, recommended policy reforms, as well as the broader signals connoted by participation in the programs, undermine labor organizations and the adoption of protective laws. To substantiate these claims, we use time-series cross-national data for a sample of 123 low- and middle-income countries for the years 1985 to 2002. Our findings suggest that programs from both IFIs are negatively and significantly related to labor rights, including laws designed to guarantee basic collective labor rights as well as the protection of these rights in practice.