This paper explores the implications of going beyond transaction cost theory's implicit focus on domestic investors to include multinational actors. As developed herein, the discriminating alignment between the level of hazards (contractual and/or political) and the mode of governance carries over. In the open-economy context, such an alignment reflects the hazards that arise from the nature of the transaction and those that arise from the nature of the political and regulatory environment.

For the first time in modern history, free trade coexists with free finance. Free trade and free finance (defined as the deregulation and internationalization of banking and finance) are not mutually reinforcing, but cause a mismatch between the demand and supply of financial instruments. Investors want more marketable instruments whereas entrepreneurs want more transaction-specific instruments. This mismatch potentially hurts small firms and local interests most. What can they do about it? It depends on state institutions. The more centralized the state, the fewer opportunities available to potential losers to curb free finance. Free finance is most successful in centralized countries, where resistance to free finance is least strongly felt. This hypothesis is systematically tested on a sample of OECD countries.

This essay tests the hypotheses and claims of models of internationalization that draw on neo-classical trade theory. Using the influential Frieden-Rogowski model, it examines the responses of Iraq and Algeria to the oil price shocks of the 1980s and 1990s. The cases demonstrate that even the most basic assumptions and predictions of this economistic model are flawed. The Frieden-Rogowski model misrepresents the mechanisms through which price shocks are translated into policy, makes inaccurate predictions about how terms of trade affect policy or sectoral performance, fails to explain the duration of lags between price changes and policy changes, and neglects important differences in a variety of major outcomes. I argue that even in the very similar cases of Algeria and Iraq, policy changed not in response to domestic pressures generated from changes in relative prices, but as a result of a severe fiscal crisis that stripped both governments of their ability to protect domestic constituents from world prices.

The globalization of production simultaneously opens up new opportunities for firms and threatens them with intensified foreign competition. Studies of the resulting producer demands for commercial policy have not yet incorporated two recent trends: the increasing significance of the trade in services and the proliferation of international corporate alliances. With two US industries (airlines and telecommunications) as illustrative case studies, it can be seen that, to a surprising extent, even competitive global industries will seek to block foreign competitors from entering local markets via alliances. The level of political conflict in response to these alliances is related to the issue of market access at home and abroad. Market barriers abroad provide global producers with the motive for seeking contingent restrictions. Restrictions at home give domestic firms the opportunity to oppose alliances without worrying that competitors could enter the market through foreign direct investment. The model suggests some important differences in the political reactions to globalization between service and manufacturing firms.