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Grace Ballor

Research Fellow

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Grace Ballor is an international business and economic historian and the 2020-2021 Harvard-Newcomen Fellow in Business History. Her research focuses on the intersections of business and politics in twentieth century Europe, particularly in the context of globalization and regional economic integration. She earned her Ph.D. in History from the University of California, Los Angeles. Before joining HBS, she held joint positions as Max Weber Fellow in History and Civilization at the European University Institute and Research Fellow in International History at the Graduate Institute, Geneva (IHEID). She is currently at work on a monograph on European integration and global capitalism. In fall 2021, she will join the Department of Social and Political Sciences at Bocconi University as assistant professor of economic history.

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Journal Articles

  2. Article | Relations internationales

    Du « défi américain » à l’expansion européenne: Les relations économiques transatlantiques des années cinquante aux années soixante-dix

    Grace A. Ballor

    Economic histories of post-war transatlantic relations have focused on two predominant narratives: US aid for European reconstruction through the Marshall Plan, and the threat of American business investment in Europe. But little research has linked these two elements. Moreover, existing scholarship has neglected the expansion of European companies across the Atlantic. This article remedies these two gaps in the literature by examining transatlantic relations through the perspective of business. In particular, the case of the Belgian grocer Delhaize, its participation in US technical assistance programs in the 1950s, the challenges it faced in the 1960s, and its expansion into US markets in the 1970s offers a new dimension to the history of twentieth-century transatlantic relations and the history of globalization.

    Keywords: multinational corporations; Economic History; International Relations; Business History; Foreign Direct Investment; Multinational Firms and Management;

    Citation:

    Ballor, Grace A. "Du « défi américain » à l’expansion européenne: Les relations économiques transatlantiques des années cinquante aux années soixante-dix." Relations internationales 180, no. 4 (Fall 2019): 43–57.  View Details
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  3. Article | Business and Politics

    Multinational Firms and the Politics of International Trade in Multidisciplinary Perspective

    Grace A. Ballor and Aydin B. Yildirim

    From the technical analyses of wide ranges of scholars to the public discourse backlashes against globalization, there is a huge volume of work historicizing, quantifying, and problematizing the complex role of multinational corporations (MNCs) in international trade. The body of literature is so large that most readers rely on disciplinary boundaries to narrow the catalog, causing them to miss out on important synergies across fields. By bringing the work of historians, lawyers, and political scientists working on MNCs and international trade into conversation, we offer an expanded perspective. Our collective contribution highlights the political dimensions of MNCs within the frameworks of global economic governance, in which corporations seek to influence trade policies amid rising protectionism and coordinate their activities within industry associations while regulators struggle to hold MNC parent companies accountable to international human rights violations across their value chains. Especially in this moment of re-evaluation—and possible de-globalization following the shock of COVID-19—our multidisciplinary analysis explains how MNCs exerted political power over trade regimes in the past, by what means they seek to shape regulatory frameworks in the present, and what the possible futures might be for big business operations in a more or less global economy.

    Keywords: multinational corporations; International trade; big business; economic governance; Global value chains; Trade policy; corporate regulation; Multinational Firms and Management; Trade; Policy; Governance; Globalization;

    Citation:

    Ballor, Grace A., and Aydin B. Yildirim. "Multinational Firms and the Politics of International Trade in Multidisciplinary Perspective." Special Issue on Multinational Corporations and the Politics of International Trade. Business and Politics 22, no. 4 (December 2020): 573–586.  View Details
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