Host-country corruption discourages multinational firms’ foreign investments. Nonetheless, multinationals may still want to invest to benefit from local business opportunities. To deal with the challenges of operating in a corrupt host country, they can use experience gained in other corrupt countries. We distinguish between “clean hands” and “dirty hands” learning about corruption – that is to say, learning how to avoid bribing, or learning how to pay bribes and avoid traceability. We disentangle these two competing mechanisms, which were confounded in previous studies, by assessing how home-country enforcement of laws against bribery abroad modifies how prior experience in corrupt countries mitigates the discouraging effect of host-country corruption on investment. We propose that, under clean hands learning, home-country enforcement strengthens the mitigating influence whereas, under dirty hands learning, home-country enforcement weakens this influence. Results from analyzing the location choices made by 25,067 multinationals from 97 countries for their 91,371 greenfield investments in 101 countries from 2008 to 2016 reveal that corruption experience mitigates the discouraging influence of host country corruption but that home country enforcement of laws against bribery reverses this influence. This is consistent with the view that dirty hands learning prevails over clean hands learning.

东道国的腐败阻碍了跨国公司的海外投资。尽管如此，跨国公司可能仍希望投资以从当地商机中受益。为了应对在腐败东道国运营的挑战，他们可以利用在其他腐败国家获得的经验。我们区分“清白之手”和“脏手”，学习腐败——也就是说，学习如何避免贿赂，或学习如何行贿和避免可追溯性。我们通过评估本国在海外执行反贿赂法律如何改变腐败国家的先前经验如何减轻东道国腐败对投资的抑制作用，来解开这两个在先前研究中被混淆的竞争机制。我们建议，在干净的手学习下，本国的执法加强了减轻的影响，而在脏手学习下，本国的执法削弱了这种影响。对 2008 年至 2016 年期间来自 97 个国家/地区的 25,067 家跨国公司在 101 个国家/地区的 91,371 项绿地投资所选择的选址进行分析后，结果显示，腐败经历减轻了东道国腐败的阻碍影响，但本国执行反贿赂法律可以逆转这种影响。这与 dirty hands 学习胜过 clean hands 学习的观点是一致的。