3. Electronic Theses and Dissertations (ETDs) - All submissions
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Item An exploration of corporate criminal liability in international law for aiding and abetting international crimes in Africa(2015) Ongeso, John PaulAt present, international law has not succeeded in establishing a way through which multinational corporations (MNCs) can be regulated effectively and compelled to adhere to international human rights standards. This poses a problem for states that rely heavily on the investment of MNCs for economic development. African states in particular compete for investment by reducing their regulatory mechanisms in order to attract MNCs. This allows MNCs to engage in practices that violate human rights and contribute to the commission of international crimes. This thesis seeks to address this problem by exploring how MNCs can be held criminally liable in international law if they are involved in serious human rights abuses and international crimes. In the twentieth century, two seminal events in international criminal justice illustrate that there was evidence that the notion of holding multinational corporations criminally liable was possible. These include i) the jurisprudence of the Allied Tribunals at Nuremberg after World War II which contemplated the possibility of corporate criminal liability and ii) the negotiations during the establishment of the International Criminal Court (ICC) in the 1990s which considered proposals for the extension of criminal liability to corporations. At the national level, many states provide for corporate criminal liability. This is often derived from the establishment of criminal liability of an official of the corporation. The United Kingdom and Australia, however, have successfully set out how a corporation may itself be found criminally liable without the need to derive its criminal liability from an official. These developments show that the idea of holding MNCs criminally liable, either through a derivative or non-derivative process, is possible and achievable. In particular, this thesis proposes that MNCs can be found criminally liable for aiding and abetting international crimes under Article 25(3)(c) of the Statute of the ICC. In proposing a way through which this can be achieved, this thesis does two things: i) it extracts principles of non-derivative criminal liability established in the United Kingdom and Australia and ii) it develops a theory of corporate criminal liability for aiding and abetting international crimes that incorporates these principles. This theory underpins the proposed new approach to the establishment of corporate criminal liability for aiding and abetting in the ICC.Item MNC-borne FDI, absorptive capacity and economic growth: an empirical investigation(2011-10-28) Nhamo, SeniaThe liberalization of FDI is deepening, so have the incentive schemes put in place by a number of countries. Investment promotion agencies in these countries are seen to be actively promoting their countries as the best locations for foreign direct investment (FDI). With FDI emerging as a fovourite source of capital for most countries, profound questions about the true value of FDI to host countries are addressed in this study. While incentive packages may be justified on the basis of incomplete internalization of FDI benefits by foreign firms, it still remains critical to establish whether these benefits (spillovers) are substantive. As an attempt to answer these questions, this dissertation uses both firm level and country level data to investigate the effects of foreign direct investment (FDI) on productivity and economic growth. The first part of the study uses cross sectional firm level data to investigate whether foreign firms are more productive than domestic firms. We further examine whether there are any significant productivity spillovers from foreign to domestic firms or not. SIn the second part, focus is on country level analysis which uses both time series and panel data techniques. In the time series analysis we use the recent Toda-Yamamoto causality testing framework to determine the direction of causality between FDI and growth for three groups of countries: developing, emerging and developed countries. This is followed by fixed effects and dynamic panel data analyses for the 37 countries (9 developing, 12 emerging and 16 developed) where we test for absorptive capacity effects. Our findings show that results are determined to a great extent by the method of analysis. Interesting findings emerge from this study. The firm level data revealed the importance of multinational corporations in improving domestic firm productivity. With this finding, we anticipate these results to filter through the macro system and show up in the time series and panel data analyses. In the case of developing economies, productivity differences between domestic and foreign firms are confirmed only where the definition of FDI is below the full ownership level. Positive but statistically insignificant spillovers are found in the developing country sample. From the emerging economy sample, we iii find neither significant productivity differences nor related spillovers from foreign to domestic firms. With regards to developed economies, as in the case of emerging economies, there are no statistically significant productivity differences between domestic and foreign firms. Interestingly, for this sample, positive and highly significant spillovers from foreign to domestic firms are documented. The Toda Yamamoto Granger causality framework shows unidirectional causality from FDI to GDP in Colombia, Egypt and Zambia. These results suggest that in these three countries, we have a case of growth enhancing FDI. There is also evidence of causality which runs from GDP to FDI in China, Indonesia, France, Japan, Spain and the United Kingdom. This is a case where higher levels of economic activity attract foreign direct investment. We also find evidence of bi-directional causality for Argentina, Kenya and Thailand. No clear cut relationship between FDI and growth is established in the rest of the countries: Brazil, Chile, Ghana, India, Jordan, Madagascar, Malawi, Morocco, South Africa and all but four of the developed economies. The dynamic panel data analysis for the developing economy sample reveals positive effects between FDI and economic growth. A key finding from this is the negative impact of financial development, an absorptive capacity measure. This unexpected result raises the possibility of international capital flows becoming more harmful to developing economies when extensive development of the domestic financial sector makes it difficult to regulate financial transactions of relatively esoteric financial contracts. This evidence there should be a nuanced embrace of financial globalization by developing economies. In the emerging economy analysis, the roles of openness of the economy and financial development as absorptive capacity indicators are elevated. Overall, the dynamic analysis shows a largely negative and statistically insignificant effect of FDI on economic growth. For developed economies, we find that negative effects of FDI on economic growth are encountered at both the minimum and mean levels of openness. This suggests that for developed economies, a level of openness above the mean value would be ideal for economic growth to be realized through FDI. iv Corroborating our findings with the work of other scholars, we conclude that our results are complementary. It appears that the contradictions inherent in the FDI-Growth literature could be partly due to methodological differences.