Homeward Bound? Interest, Identity, and Investor Behavior in a Third World Export
Are indigenous investors in Third World export platforms more stable than their allegedly “footloose” foreign rivals? While mainstream economists hold that investor behavior is independent of investor identity and therefore call for the parallel treatment of domestic and foreign firms, their critics hold that indigenous investors are more dedicated than their foreign counterparts and therefore call for industrial policies designed to cultivate and defend native entrepreneurs. Who is correct? The author uses a unique combination of qualitative and quantitative data to document and account for the relative stability and dynamism of indigenous investors in the Dominican Republic’s largest export processing zone and thereby brings economic sociology back from the margins of development theory—and development theory back into the heartland of sociology.