State investment is playing an important role for the future of international politics

From China to France and Singapore, sovereign wealth funds and state-owned enterprises have helped transform states into major global owners of capital. What are the consequences for the global political economy? The ‘new’ state capitalism of the 21st century is much more transnational and diffuse than a geopolitical reading suggests. Milan Babic proposes to look at the consequences rather than the immediate motivations of foreign state investment, which are hard to decipher and generalise. In his study, he uses fine-grained firm-level data across the globe.