Abstract

A multinational corporation engages in foreign direct investment for the extraction of a natural resource in a developing country. The corporation bears the initial investment and earns as a return a share of the profits. The host country provides access and guarantees conditions of operation. Since the investment is totally sunk, the corporation must account in its plan not only for uncertainty in market conditions but also for the threat of nationalization. In a real options framework, where the government holds an American call option on nationalization, we show under which conditions a Nash bargaining leads to a profit distribution maximizing the joint venture surplus. We find that the threat of nationalization does not affect the investment threshold but only the Nash bargaining solution set. Finally, we show that the optimal sharing rule results from the way the two parties may differently trade off rents with option values. (C) 2013 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Keywords

Real options; Nash bargaining; Expropriation; Natural resources; Foreign direct investment

Published in

Resource and Energy Economics
2013, Volume: 35, number: 3, pages: 295-315
Publisher: ELSEVIER SCIENCE BV

SLU Authors

• Di Corato, Luca

  • Department of Economics, Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences
    

Sustainable Development Goals

SDG8 Decent work and economic growth
SDG17 Partnerships for the goals


UKÄ Subject classification

Economics


Publication identifier

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.reseneeco.2013.02.004

Permanent link to this page (URI)

https://res.slu.se/id/publ/50513