When foreign investors choose to invest in a poor country, do they favor democracies or autocracies? Despite extensive time-series cross-national empirical work on this question, the answer is unclear. To move the debate forward, I use a novel approach based on a most-similar case design. I observe four African countries before, during, and after democratization, and evaluate whether the change in regime type over time affected their ability to attract foreign investment—both relative to their baseline level of investment and in comparison with the investment patterns of four matching countries that did not experience democratization. I also control for the effects of natural resource scarcity and abundance. My difference-in-differences pairwise case analysis indicates the introduction of competitive political institutions is immaterial for foreign investment, whereas the consolidation of these institutions conveys a small investment advantage.

当外国投资者选择在贫穷国家投资时，他们偏爱民主国家还是独裁国家？尽管在这个问题上进行了广泛的时间序列跨国实证研究，但答案尚不清楚。为了推动辩论，我使用了一种基于最相似案例设计的新颖方法。我观察了四个非洲国家在民主化之前，之中和之后的情况，并评估了政体类型的长期变化是否影响了它们吸引外国投资的能力—相对于它们的基准投资水平，以及与四个匹配国家的投资模式相比没有经历民主化。我还控制了自然资源稀缺和丰富的影响。