An Empirical Analysis of CFIUS: Examining Foreign Investment Regulation in the United States

The Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS) examines foreign proposed transactions to garner control of American entities and advises on national security risks through a confidential review process. Previous scholarship on CFIUS has concentrated on specific events and legislative amendments to the process. This Note, through aggregating publicly available sources of information regarding CFIUS reviews, produces the first comprehensive empirical analysis of the process. Using event studies, we show that CFIUS actions have resulted in multi-billion dollar wealth transfers to American companies. Our regression analysis of publicly available data indicates that outcomes of CFIUS reviews are best explained by factors relating to national security concerns.