This paper explores the interaction between labour market regulations, openness to immigration and FDI attraction. Using investment level data we explore the location decisions of some eight thousand investments, allowing for both firm and country level factors. We demonstrate that firms investing in rich countries are attracted by comparatively more flexible labour market regulations, and openness to immigration. Moreover, we illustrate that there is a distinction between the quantity and the quality of FDI, with there being an inverse relationship between the productivity of the FDI that locations attract, and the extent of labour market flexibility.

Refugees represent promising talent sources, yet due to the complex challenges they face—including language barriers, vocational training needs, discrimination, and mental health issues—employers need to provide specific forms of support for successful workplace integration. Research on effective support is limited. This article delves into specific support mechanisms for refugee employees by exploring both the employees' and employers’ perspectives on and evaluations of such support. Utilizing a multiperspective approach, this study reflects 53 semi-structured interviews conducted with refugee employees, supervisors, and colleagues in 25 distinct support relationships. The triangulation of their diverse viewpoints yields a comprehensive perspective on complex support dynamics in workplaces that suggests a support typology, which in turn provides a basis for three propositions. These propositions illuminate how various forms of workplace support can enhance or undermine refugees' agency and psychological well-being. This research contributes to the empowerment of refugee employees while highlighting potential pitfalls in support strategies that could disempower them. Building on these insights, a series of practitioner workshops were conducted, offering valuable guidance to participants in designing support strategies.

Is the implementation of environmental regulations harmful to the international competitiveness of domestic producers? Or does it present an opportunity to boost their global green competitiveness? These two crucial questions have been inadequately addressed at the firm level, particularly in developing economies. This study aims to address this limitation in the literature by investigating the impact of China’s CO₂ emission trading scheme (ETS) on firms’ exports of all goods in general and environmental goods in particular. Moreover, this study is innovative in combining the views of environmental economics and international economics literature, exploring how the impact of ETS varies across firms depending on a variety of factors, such as firms' past export experiences and size, polluting levels of industries, and exporting destinations. Using a time-varying DID technique combined with the PSM approach, our findings suggest that China's ETS enhanced firms’ global competitiveness by significantly increasing their exports of environmental goods rather than all goods. However, our research reveals that this promoting impact exhibits significant heterogeneity, with a more pronounced impact on firms in less polluting industries or those exporting to high-income destinations. Therefore, policymakers may need to consider such heterogeneities and promote green competitiveness across a wider range of firms.

Transparency has been heralded as a solution to economic policies, security issues, and human rights. Combining elements from institutional and signaling theories, we develop a theoretical framework which suggests that institutional changes regarding pollution transparency incentivize firms in emerging markets to go beyond first-order responses to this problem (i.e., green washing, reduce pollution temporary, or mask it via outsourcing) and take a more proactive stance by developing eco-innovations, i.e., new technologies targeting energy saving, emissions reduction, or other long-term environmental benefits. Moreover, we posit that the effects of these institutional changes will be more pronounced for internationally oriented firms (i.e., foreign-owned and exporting firms) given the learning and exploitation benefits associated with these activities. We test these hypotheses using a quasi-experimental design that takes advantage of a change in pollution transparency regulations in China in 2008 across 113 cities. Employing a large sample of Chinese manufacturing firms during the period of 2002-2013 across 338 cities we find support for our conjectures: pollution transparency increases both the incidence and intensity of firms’ eco-innovations in transparent jurisdictions, and that these effects are more pronounced for internationally oriented firms. These findings provide some concrete policy avenues for reduction of pollution.