Foreign Direct Investment,Economic Growth,and the Human Capital Threshold: Evidence from US States*

The United States has experienced a dramatic increase in foreign direct investment (FDI) in recent years. While foreign firms bring immediate benefits of high‐paying jobs, data limitations have prevented detailed study on FDI's long‐term effects on the states receiving it. By creating a new stock measure of FDI based on employment, we are able to capture these long‐term effects. Results demonstrate that FDI has a greater impact on per capita output growth than domestic investment for US states that meet a minimum human capital threshold. Ironically, the most active states in the recruitment of FDI tend to fall below this threshold.     

Spillovers from Foreign Direct Investment in Spanish Manufacturing Firms

This paper examines the effect of participation by foreign capital and the spillovers from a foreign presence on the technical progress of Spanish manufacturing firms. The results show that foreign direct investment (FDI) creates positive spillover effects for local firms, and when the presence of foreign capital and the absorptive capacity of spillovers from FDI are large, more technical progress ensues. Also, local companies in capital‐ and research and development (R&D)‐intensive industries experience larger positive FDI spillovers. For these reasons, government policies should aim to attract FDI, especially in the aforementioned industries.     

FDI,Industry Heterogeneity and Employment Elasticity in China

We investigate the different impacts of foreign direct investment (FDI) on employment elasticity with China's firm level data from 1998 to 2007. Our analysis shows that the inclusion of FDI does significantly affect firms' employment elasticity when facing wage, capital and output shocks. These effects vary dramatically across industries with different factor intensities and export status. Specifically, we find that non‐exporters with FDI tend to increase employment elasticity more than exporters when wage, capital input or output changes. However, FDI firms that are engaging in labor‐intensive production tend to have larger output and capital input elasticity of employment while smaller wage elasticity of employment. Our findings help to explain the contradicting results in existing literature and provide important references for China's policy makers to design proper industry policies towards FDI.     

Spatial effects of foreign direct investment in US states

Abstract This paper estimates the aggregate productivity effects of Marshallian externalities generated by foreign direct investment (FDI) in US states, controlling for Marshallian externalities and other spatial spillovers generated by domestic firms. A regional production function framework models externalities and other spatial spillovers explicitly as determinants of total factor productivity. We employ a system generalized method of moments (GMM) estimator to account for the potential endogeneity of FDI and the presence of spatial lags. Using data for US states from 1977–2003, the results indicate that FDI generates positive externalities, while externalities from domestic firms are negative.     

Skill Upgrading and Production Transfer within Swedish Multinationals

This paper studies the link between production transfer within Swedish‐headquartered multinational enterprises (MNEs) in the manufacturing industry and skill upgrading in their parent companies in the 1990s. The analysis distinguishes between horizontal and vertical foreign direct investment (FDI). The increased employment share in the affiliates in non‐OECD countries (vertical FDI) has a non‐trivial, significantly positive effect on the share of skilled labor in the Swedish parents. On the other hand, the parents’ skill upgrading is unrelated to employment changes in their affiliates in other OECD countries (horizontal FDI). This is consistent with implications of the newly developed horizontal MNE models.     

Is the effect really so large? Firm‐level evidence on the role of FDI in a transition economy1

Foreign subsidiaries usually perform better than domestic enterprises, but selection effects have been acknowledged in the literature. This article contributes by quantitatively evaluating the size of the selection effects and direct effects of FDI entry. We use a large panel of firm‐level data from Poland and match foreign‐owned firms to a control group of non‐foreign‐owned companies and analyse various performance indicators. In terms of efficiency measures, between 50 and 70 percent of the foreign affiliates advantage may be attributed to direct ownership effects. However, in the case of export intensity, the majority of the differential between the domestic companies and foreign subsidiaries is attributable to selection effects: MNEs choose export‐oriented companies and sectors.     

Does corruption hinder investment? Evidence from Russian regions

This paper investigates the relationship between corruption and fixed capital investment in the setting of a corrupt country. Using different measures of corruption – registered cases of bribe taking and incidents of experienced corruption by the population – we find a negative relationship between investment and corruption. We then address the problem of endogeneity of corruption using an instrumental variables approach: when corruption is instrumented with freedom of the press and violations of journalists' rights, we find an even bigger negative effect. Disaggregating investment by ownership-type shows that only private investment is affected by corruption, but not investment made by state-owned companies. The negative effect is larger for companies with full or partial foreign ownership. Additionally, we look at the relationship between corruption and foreign direct investment (FDI): similar to the investment in fixed capital, we find a negative relationship; however, its statistical significance varies across specifications with different data sources for FDI and different corruption measures.     

DOES FOREIGN INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY RIGHTS PROTECTION AFFECT US EXPORTS AND FDI?

Several previous studies have examined the relationship between intellectual property rights (IPR) protection, exports, and FDI independently. However, very few prior analyses jointly examined the linkages between IPR protection and multiple modes of international transactions. This paper investigates how foreign IPR protection affects how US firms jointly serve overseas markets through exports and FDI. Using both static pooled regressions and a dynamic panel GMM estimator on a panel data of 53 countries, we examine whether stronger foreign IPR protection stimulates US international transactions. The empirical results suggest that foreign countries that strengthen their IPR protection, especially those with strong imitative ability, can attract more international transactions from the USA.     

Labor Training and Foreign Direct Investment

Evidence shows that most foreign direct investment (FDI) flows from developed to developed countries (North–North) in skilled labor‐intensive industries. This paper builds a model that incorporates labor training into the proximity–concentration tradeoffs to analyze the entry mode of multinationals to a foreign country. Production requires both skilled labor and unskilled labor.. A multinational pursuing FDI needs to provide training to some workers in the host country to equip them with skills that are specific to the production of the firm. Labor training and skill specificity lead to contract friction. It is shown that in skilled labor‐intensive industries, FDI increases along with the economic development level of the host country, whereas in unskilled labor‐intensive industries, the reverse is true. This paper provides a theoretical explanation for the empirical findings on the prevalence of North–North FDI in skilled labor‐industries and North–South FDI in unskilled labor‐intensive industries.     

FDI spillovers in new EU member states

Using an unbalanced panel of firm‐level data in Bulgaria, Poland and Romania, we examine the impact of foreign firms on domestic firms’ productivity. In particular, we try to answer the following research questions: (1) Are there any spillover effects of foreign direct investments (FDI), and if so, are they positive or negative? (2) Are spillover effects more likely to occur within or across sectors? (3) Are the existence, the direction and the magnitude of spillovers conditioned by sector and firm‐specific characteristics? Our findings show that FDI spillovers exist both within and across sectors. The former arise when foreign firms operate in labour‐intensive sectors, while the latter occur when foreign firms operate in high‐tech sectors. Moreover, we find that domestic firm size conditions the exploitation of FDI spillovers even after controlling for absorptive capacity. We also detect a great deal of heterogeneity across countries consistent with the technology gap hypothesis.     

Taxes,institutions and foreign diversification opportunities

Investors can access foreign diversification opportunities through either foreign portfolio investment (FPI) or foreign direct investment (FDI). The worldwide tax regime employed by the US potentially distorts this choice by penalizing FDI, relative to FPI, in low-tax countries. On the other hand, weak investor protections in foreign countries may increase the value of control, creating an incentive to use FDI rather than FPI. By combining data on US outbound FPI and FDI, this paper analyzes whether the composition of US outbound capital flows reflects these incentives to bypass home and host country institutional regimes. The results suggest that the residual tax on US multinational firms' foreign earnings skews the composition of outbound capital flows — a 10% decrease in a foreign country's corporate tax rate increases US investors' equity FPI holdings by approximately 10%, controlling for effects on FDI. Investor protections also seem to shape portfolio choices, though these results are not robust when only within-country variation is employed.     

Transportation Costs and US Manufacturing FDI

In empirical models of foreign direct investment (FDI), distance is most often used to proxy for transportation costs and other pure‐trade costs. Given that distance is time invariant but transportation costs are not, this approach is less than satisfactory when actual transportation costs rise and fall over time.The contribution of this work is to explicitly control for transportation costs and thereby better understand their impact on FDI. We explore the impact of shipping costs on total US FDI stocks abroad, manufacturing stocks and service stocks using measures of sea‐shipping and air‐shipping costs in a Hausman–Taylor model that controls for endogeneity and allows for time‐invariant variables such as distance. We find that transportation costs have a positive and statistically significant relationship with US total and manufacturing FDI, suggesting a substitute relationship between FDI and trade flows consistent with horizontal MNE activity. As one would expect, these costs are insignificant for service stocks.     

FOREIGN DIRECT INVESTMENT IN MEXICO,CRIME, AND ECONOMIC FORCES

This paper re‐examines inflows of foreign direct investment (FDI) in the 32 subnational Mexican states based on quarterly data from 2005 to 2015, which includes rising drug‐related crimes. We estimate our models using panel data methods by type of crime, state‐level indicators (real wages and electricity consumption), macroeconomic forces (the real exchange rate and interest rate), and a dummy variable for the financial crisis of 2008–2009. We employ a flexible lag‐length method and find that homicides and thefts have negative and statistically significant effects on FDI, while other crimes have no effects. Subsample work suggests higher negative effects in the most violent states. (JEL F15, F21, F23, F36)     

The Effect of Foreign Affiliate Employment on Wages,Employment, and the Wage Share in Austria

This paper estimates the effects of outward Foreign Direct Investment (employment in affiliates abroad) on employment, wages and the wage share in Austria using panel data for the period 1996–2005. There is evidence of significant negative effects of FDI on both employment and wages, and consequently on the wage share. The results are not limited to workers in low-skilled sectors. The negative employment effect is mainly due to the rise in employment in the foreign affiliates in Eastern Europe. The negative wage effects originate from affiliate employment in both Eastern Europe and the developed countries in the industrial sector, but FDI in Eastern Europe has positive wage effects in the services sector due to possible scope effects.     

Foreign direct investment and inequality in developing countries: Does sector matter?

Scholars have studied the relationship between inward foreign direct investment (FDI) and within‐country income inequality in cross‐national contexts, but have not empirically investigated how FDI in different sectors might affect inequality in different ways. We use error correction models to analyze sectoral FDI data compiled from UNCTAD investment reports in 60 middle‐income countries from 1989 to 2010, arguing that FDI in services is more likely to be associated with inequality than FDI in other sectors. We argue that skill biases and changes in employment patterns associated with service sector investments can help explain these findings.     

Foreign direct investment,heterogeneous workers and employment security: Evidence from Germany

We analyze how foreign direct investment (FDI) affects employment security using administrative microdata for German employees. Measuring FDI intensity at the industry level enables us to take into account the sum of direct effects at multinationals as well as indirect effects of FDI throughout the affected industry. We find that both inward and outward FDI significantly reduce employment security. This is particularly the case for inward FDI coming from the western part of the European Union as well as for outward FDI going to Central and Eastern Europe. The effects are sizeable for older and low‐skilled workers.     

Do Multinational Enterprises Contribute to Convergence or Divergence? A Disaggregated Analysis of US FDI*

It is widely held that foreign direct investment (FDI) has a positive effect on economic growth. To test this hypothesis, we perform convergence regressions derived from a theoretical model on the impact of FDI on endogenous technological change in small economies. The model includes FDI externalities that enhance growth, but also shows that FDI can crowd out host country income and reduce local innovation. The empirical analysis employs disaggregated US data for various FDI‐related activities—in addition to the conventionally used aggregate FDI stocks and flows. We estimate the net FDI impact on the convergence rate of per‐capita income to US levels, controlling for human development, financial development, and trade. We find that FDI accelerates convergence for high‐income countries only, otherwise slowing it down.     

Exchange Rates and Outward Foreign Direct Investment: US FDI in Emerging Economies

This paper investigates the effect of exchange rates on US foreign direct investment (FDI) flows to a sample of 16 emerging market countries using annual panel data for the period 1990–2002. Three separate exchange rate effects are considered: the value of the local currency (a cheaper currency attracts FDI); expected changes in the exchange rate (expected devaluation implies FDI is postponed); and exchange rate volatility (discourages FDI). The results reveal a negative relationship between FDI and more expensive local currency, the expectation of local currency depreciation, and volatile exchange rates. Stable exchange rate management can be important in attracting FDI.     

(When) Should We Use Foreign Direct Investment Data to Measure the Activities of Multinational Corporations? Theory and Evidence

This paper reviews the different concepts of measuring activities of multinational corporations. It aims at working out the economic relationships that theoretically exist between these measures under general economic assumptions and then empirically investigates to which extent such relationships exist in the data. As a main conclusion, foreign direct investment (FDI) stock data is indeed a good proxy for measuring most real economic activities of multinational firms. Discrepancies between FDI stock and other data can to a large extent be given a reasonable economic meaning, but observed asset‐to‐employment patterns in multinational production also call for more thorough future research.     

FDI,Poverty, and the Politics of Potable Water Access

How does foreign direct investment (FDI) affect the wellbeing of the poor? We address this question by analyzing the impacts of FDI on access to potable water. We predict that higher levels of greenfield FDI in water‐intensive sectors slow the rate of access to potable water in developing countries, with these adverse effects conditional on subnational politics. We hypothesize that this is more likely to occur in polities marked by relatively large poor and marginalized populations, where regulatory capture is more likely to occur. To test our intuition, we analyze subnational data on greenfield FDI in India, confirming that multinational investment in “thirsty” manufacturing sectors are negatively associated with improvements in potable water access. We then present a controlled comparison case study of two Indian states, Kerala and Rajasthan, highlighting the political mechanisms conditioning FDI's effects on potable water.