In this paper, we claim that ownership is a key determinant of the firms' divestment-reinvestment sequence in a foreign country. Building on the notion of ‘relational vs. transactional ownership’, we distinguish between relational-type firms (namely, family-owned and state-owned firms), and transactional-type firms (privately non-family-owned firms). We argue that relational-type firms are less likely to both divest from, and reinvest in, a given foreign country. In fact, relational owners set a lower performance threshold of intervention than transactional ones; additionally, in order to turn the tide, the former often increase resource injection when subsidiary performance falls below the threshold. Such an escalation of commitment increases sunk costs and further decreases the likelihood of divesting the subsidiary. Moreover, when a divestment occurs, the memory of high sunk costs incurred reduces the propensity to reinvest in the same host country. We test our conceptual framework on a large sample of investments, divestments and subsequent re-entries undertaken in the period 2000–2015 by 602 Italian firms. Our econometric findings corroborate our hypotheses, thus contributing to the literature on the interdependencies between divestment and reinvestment choices, and their relationships with corporate ownership.

在本文中，我们声称所有权是公司在国外撤资-再投资顺序的关键决定因素。基于“关系型与交易型所有权”的概念，我们区分了关系型企业（即家族企业和国有企业）和交易型企业（私人非家族企业）。我们认为，关系型公司不太可能同时从特定国家撤资和再投资。事实上，关系所有者设定的干预绩效门槛低于交易所有者；此外，为了力挽狂澜，前者往往会在子公司业绩低于门槛时加大资源注入。这种承诺的升级增加了沉没成本，并进一步降低了剥离子公司的可能性。而且，当撤资发生时，对高额沉没成本的记忆会降低在同一东道国进行再投资的倾向。我们通过 602 家意大利公司在 2000 年至 2015 年期间进行的大量投资、撤资和随后的重新进入来测试我们的概念框架。我们的计量经济学发现证实了我们的假设，从而为关于撤资和再投资选择之间相互依赖性及其与公司所有权关系的文献做出了贡献。