Yumi Park
My research centers on three interconnected areas in international political economy (IPE). At the core is the political economy of international investment: how business–state relations shape cross-border capital, firms’ strategies in foreign markets, and the institutions governing investment disputes. My book project examines the political foundations of financial globalization, while related projects investigate regulatory capture, firms’ acquisition of political and regulatory access abroad, and how political connections shape behavior in investor–state arbitration. A second strand examines the interplay between international economic institutions and domestic politics: how international cooperation reshapes domestic political and economic interests, and how those interests, in turn, shape international institutions. This work examines Federal Reserve and Chinese currency swaps, IMF conditionality, and the domestic political foundations of investment treaties. A third strand examines the mass politics of globalization. Using pre-registered conjoint experiments across seven countries, this work examines how citizens evaluate multinational firms and international economic institutions, including how corporate behavior, corruption, and distributional considerations shape public attitudes toward globalization.
Publications
Are dollars popular? The Fed’s currency swap arrangements and recipient governments’ popularity (with Sujeong Shim). Review of International Political Economy. 2025.
Can international cooperation affect public opinion and possibly reverse the anti-incumbent sentiments during economic shocks? We examine this question by analyzing the effect of the US Federal Reserve’s Currency Swap Arrangements (CSAs). The Federal Reserve (the Fed) has emerged as a global lender of last resort by providing currency swap arrangements (CSAs) to foreign central banks. While existing literature has explored the economic consequences, there is limited understanding of their political ramifications. Using quarterly data from the 2008 Global Financial Crisis, we find that Fed swap lines are linked to increased domestic public support for recipient governments. We suggest this is because swaps are typically followed by exchange rate stabilisation and expansionary monetary policies. While ordinary citizens may not be aware of swaps, they perceive currency stabilisation and stimulus measures as signals of positive economic turnarounds, thereby increasing support for incumbents. The rise in approval ratings following CSAs is striking, especially given that CSAs are implemented during global shocks. Our findings demonstrate that the Fed, much like other international organisations, can influence foreign countries’ domestic politics.
Play the scramble, avoid the backlash? Partisan dynamics in the negotiation of bilateral investment treaties (with Andrew McWard). Review of International Political Economy. 2025.
Sparked by a proliferation of bilateral investment treaties (BITs) at the turn of the century, the modern international investment regime now faces a backlash from dissatisfied states. We examine the link between these two periods of cooperation at the treaty level. Specifically, we argue that different partisan coalitions within developing countries influence an agreement’s formation with implications for its design and longevity. Left-wing parties are generally reluctant to form BITs, which grants them an advantage in negotiation for the rare agreements they do sign onto. In contrast, right-wing parties embrace BITs with high costs to lock-in pro-business policies. Agreements formed by the left avoid such stringent obligations and developing countries remain satisfied with the treaty’s terms for a longer period of time. We test the argument quantitatively with data on BIT formation, design, and exit from 1980 to 2020, with an emphasis on the inclusion of exit clauses. The paper adds to our understanding of the international investment regime’s present crisis and highlights the understudied role of partisan politics in international cooperation.
Working Papers
Help at a High Cost: China's Bilateral Swap Lines, IMF Dependence, and the Terms of Lending in the Global South (with Aditi Sahasrabuddhe) Revise and Resubmit.
How do China's global economic initiatives influence its partners? We argue that while China's growing bilateral swaps are often painted as an alternative to the US-led governance system, it does not enhance the bargaining power of borrowers with traditional creditors. Rather, participation in China’s swap program is associated with a higher likelihood of signing International Monetary Fund (IMF) programs, particularly more stringent and less attractive IMF loans. Participants in both China swaps and IMF programs experience deteriorated financial health. We triangulate multiple methods and evidence bases to support our claims. We build our argument using elite interviews and test our hypotheses using a cross-national panel dataset of all swaps signed from 2006-2020, using a Bartik shift-share instrument and a two-stage Heckman selection model, as well as different-in-differences estimations. We show that China's economic initiatives serve the US-led monetary order rather than providing dissatisfied states a pathway to reduce their dependence on the IMF. Our study adds new insights on the implications of financial governance fragmentation and highlights the limits of the financial statecraft of borrowers.
Political Exposure and Post-Award Contestation. Under review.
What determines whether an arbitral award, once won, is actually honored? Finality is the central promise of investor–state arbitration, yet some awards are contested for years while others are not. This paper argues that the answer lies in the political exposure of the claimant. When investors win, paying a politically-exposed claimant is domestically costly: compliance looks like political concession rather than legal obligation. When they lose, politically-exposed investors fight on at the behest of patrons who cannot afford a visible international defeat. Using the full universe of treaty-based ISDS cases from 1987–2025, and comparing claimants that faced the same respondent state, the paper finds that politically-exposed claimants face odds of post-award contestation nearly three times those of otherwise similar non-exposed claimants. The gap is sharpest on the host side: when a politically-exposed investor wins, the odds that the host challenges the award are roughly nine times those of an award won by a non-exposed investor, and, comparing across host states, the effect is larger in democracies where domestic audiences can hold governments accountable for paying foreign investors. Political exposure predicts the refusal to accept the outcome, not the outcome itself: the investors best positioned to win awards are precisely those least likely to collect on them.
Cosmopolitan Leaders and Treaty Ties: How Pre-Office Foreign Experience Shapes International Cooperation (with Xunchao Zhang and Andrew McWard) Under review.
Does pre-office foreign experience at the leadership level influence patterns of international cooperation? We examine whether leaders who have experience living in foreign soil before taking office, which we refer to as ``cosmopolitan leaders," are more inclined to sign economic treaties. Contrary to the expectation that such leaders would be more cooperative across international agreements, our research reveals that cosmopolitan leaders are less inclined to sign economic treaties in general and tend to be more selective, influenced by factors like colonial legacy and country affinity. Leveraging an original dataset on cosmopolitan leaders, we empirically test our theory at both monadic and dyadic levels, examining global leaders from 1901 to 2001. Our study contributes to the existing literature by systematically exploring the impact of pre-office leadership experience on trade agreement patterns. We disentangle leadership traits from institutional constraints and enhance socialization theories by focusing on pre-office experiences.
The Market for Regulatory Access (with Anne Jamison)
Does the degree of regulatory capture in a host country shape foreign direct investment decisions? Existing literature demonstrates that firms with better government connections are more successful in navigating regulatory environments. This is particularly important in sectors that are heavily regulated, such as telecommunications, energy, and natural resources. However, we know little of how these dynamics factor into the strategies of multinational corporations looking to enter foreign markets. We theorize that if domestic firms have already achieved regulatory capture, MNCs will merge with or acquire these domestic firms rather than undertake greenfield investment. To test this hypothesis, we leverage terabytes of media data to map networks of relationships between incumbent firms and the government in host countries. Combining this network analysis with data on hundreds of thousands of cross-border deals, we demonstrate that the mode of entry into a country is explained by the pre-existing level of conflict or cooperation between firms and the government. Specifically, multinationals are three times as likely to enter vis-à-vis a local partner in contexts with enmeshed business-government relations. Our research contributes to an understanding of how domestic politics shape the patterns of foreign direct investment, and, by extension, globalization. It also advances our understanding of business-government relations outside of advanced democracies, which is particularly important given that there is often less of a separation between economics and politics in authoritarian contexts.
Domestic Banks’ Lobby, Trade Openness, and the Political Economy of Financial Liberalization
Why do some countries develop more globalized financial markets than others? One conventional wisdom of the international political economy literature is that finance follows trade. There are substantial variations, however, among countries that are similarly integrated into the global economy that have chosen different levels of financial liberalization. I examine this puzzle with a new framework that looks at how a country’s trade openness affects its domestic banks’ lobby for financial market liberalization. I find that governments are more likely to face pressures for financial liberalization from domestic banks when the country is heavily integrated into international trade but has not yet removed capital controls. On the other hand, domestic banks are more likely to pressure the government for financial liberalization when the private benefits of international capital inflows outweigh the benefits of private rents provided by the government domestically. Using my own dataset on global trade networks and government subsidies to the financial sector in 181 countries from 1980 to 2018, I find that countries that are integrated into the global economy with a domestic banking industry that does not depend on government subsidies will develop larger, deeper and more globalized financial markets. This study contributes to the scholarship of international political economy by distinguishing financial liberalization from economic liberalization and explaining the many cases of financial liberalization that are not crisis-induced.
Corruption perceptions home and abroad: Universal values or double standards (with Zoltan Fazekas, Mogens Kamp and Michael Mueller)
How does the public perceive and punish corrupt multinational companies? Do company features matter for the electoral punishment faced by the politicians involved? To answer our research questions, we field a set of original multi-country survey experiments. We argue that perceptual biases shape how severe corruption acts are deemed and why only some corrupt companies and politicians are punished.
Partners in Crime, Unequal in Blame: How a Politician’s Counterparty Shapes Public Accountability for Corruption
(with Zoltan Fazekas, Mogens Kamp and Michael Mueller)
Corruption often involves politicians trading preferential treatment in exchange for private benefits offered by companies. While the extent of electoral punishment corrupt politicians face received a lot of scholarly attention, far less is known about how much it matters who are the partners in crime. Across all contexts, we first show that the public punishes politicians involved in wrongdoing with corporations proportional to the severity of malfeasance. These negative reactions take many forms, from expectations of public apologies to clear refusal to vote for the politicians. Second, we find that the public backlash is systematically stronger if the counterparts are of foreign rather than domestic origin and this differential punishment is rooted in foreign country corruption perceptions.
Work in Progress
Finance Follows Trade? A Networks Perspective
The Reputation Premium: Elite Persistence and Institutional Design in Investment Arbitration. (with Andrew McWard).
Connected to Compete: Political Ties, Technical Rulemaking, and the Demand for Financial Deregulation.