Globalization and Outward Foreign Direct Investment

While recent research into foreign direct investment (FDI) has focused on examining the importance of institutions, corruption, money laundering, and tax havens, the role of globalization on FDI has not yet been explored. This research investigates the impacts of globalization on outward FDI. We find that both overall globalization and its economic and social dimensions significantly positively influence outward FDI flows. We also demonstrate that beyond the level of globalization, corruption, money laundering, and the status of a country as a tax haven, cross-country similarity also plays an important role. Accordingly, policies specifically designed to increase the transparency of outward FDI flows should be required to address money laundering and the existence of tax havens.     

Corruption and competition for resources

An increasing share of world FDI is carried out by multinationals from developing countries. These investors may have objectives and constraints that differ from their developed country counterparts. In this paper we focus on differences in attitudes to corruption, and how these may shape the competition for the right to extract resources in a developing country context. We show how differences in the investors’ level of technology and differences in the host country government’s trade-off between bribes and taxes determine who wins the competition for the resource and the winning price. One finding is that competition from a bribe-willing investor may induce a bribe-averse investor to enter into corruption. Surprisingly, however, we also find that competition with a bribe-willing investor may induce the bribe-averse investor to increase its tax payments.     

Financial Competitiveness,Financial Openness and Bilateral Foreign Direct Investment

ABSTRACT

In this article, we test the impacts of financial competitiveness and financial openness on bilateral FDI with novel indexes, covering 127 host countries and 122 home countries from 2009 to 2016. We find that the improvement of financial competitiveness and financial openness significantly increases the FDI assets in the home country and significantly increases the FDI liabilities in the host country. In particular, the impacts of financial competitiveness and financial openness are significant both on the intensive and extensive margins. In addition, the above results remain robust in further analyses, such as using sub-index of financial competitiveness, using quantile regression model, considering capital control on FDI and dealing with the endogenous problem. The study demonstrates the financial competitiveness and financial openness are important factors to explain why FDI positions are relatively small in some developing countries.     

Corruption as an organizational process: Understanding the logic of the denormalization of corruption

This article discusses the basic assumptions of an individualist vision on corruption. A different argument based on “social density” of the phenomenon is proposed instead: the process of normalization of corruption. Under this umbrella, corruption is a political concept that looks to impose a particular vision on what are “right” behaviors based on a sharp and unrealistic separation of the public and private sphere. A review of the organizational literature on corruption is developed, with the aim of understanding how organizational processes of socialization triggers behaviors that make corrupt acts to appear as “normal” under the organizational logic. Persons find themselves in a “slippery slope”, generating agreements and social dynamics that are able to produce corrupt logics under the normal life of an organization. A plea for discussing the social processes needed to “un-normalize” corruption is defended a conceptualization that goes beyond an individualist and moralist vision of the phenomenon.     

Corrupción como proceso organizacional: comprendiendo la lógica de la desnormalización de la corrupción

This article discusses the basic assumptions of an individualist vision on corruption. A different argument based on “social density” of the phenomenon is proposed instead: the process of normalization of corruption. Under this umbrella, corruption is a political concept that looks to impose a particular vision on what are “right” behaviors based on a sharp and unrealistic separation of the public and private sphere. A review of the organizational literature on corruption is developed, with the aim of understanding how organizational processes of socialization triggers behaviors that make corrupt acts to appear as “normal” under the organizational logic. Persons find themselves in a “slippery slope”, generating agreements and social dynamics that are able to produce corrupt logics under the normal life of an organization. A plea for discussing the social processes needed to “un-normalize” corruption is defended a conceptualization that goes beyond an individualist and moralist vision of the phenomenon.     

Host-country governance, tax treaties and US direct investment abroad

We investigate how the quality of the host-country governance and a bilateral US income tax treaty affect the rates of return that US companies require on their foreign direct investment (FDI). Using indexes of corruption and political instability, we find that poor governance causes the companies to require significantly higher rates of return. This lends support to earlier authors who have concluded that poor governance discourages both local investment and inward FDI. After accounting for the quality of host-country governance, however, no evidence could be found that an income tax treaty has any effect on the required rates of return.      

Location Decisions of Foreign Banks and Competitor Remoteness

This paper examines the role of “competitor remoteness”—the weighted average distance of all competing banks to a host country—on the location decision of a foreign bank. It uses unique, bilateral data on 1,199 foreign banks from 75 home countries present in 110 host countries. It finds that, besides bilateral distance, competitor remoteness importantly drives foreign banks’ location decisions. The impact of distance and competitor remoteness is stronger for non‐OECD home and host countries, when the scale of foreign bank inward and outward investment is limited, and for host countries where foreign banks dominate.     

环境规制与中国外商直接投资变化——基于DEA多重分解的实证研究

中国经济进入“新常态”,产能过剩和环境污染问题日益突出,国际投资环境不容乐观,“供给侧结构性改革”为中国经济“新常态”下的必要举措。本文探索环境规制下我国FDI变化的影响因素,通过FDI的子向量距离函数定义“环境规制生产技术”和“非环境规制生产技术”,以此构造环境规制的成本效应,测度中国30个省份1999-2015年的环境规制成本,并在此基础上对实际FDI的变化进行分解。本文的主要结论有:2001年后,中国各省份的环境规制成本呈现整体上升趋势,东部地区的环境规制效果最为明显;环境规制下,中国各省份的实际FDI增速先加快后减缓,2015年之前,第二产业对FDI的吸引力最强,2014年开始,第三产业对FDI的吸引显著增强,“供给侧结构性改革”初显成效,促进了我国的产业结构优化升级。反事实检验显示导致各个时期FDI变化的影响因素不尽相同,但随着改革开放的力度不断加大,全要素生产率和产业结构对FDI分布的影响显著增强。     

Corruption and valuation of multinational corporations

This paper examines the relationship between U.S. MNCs' valuation and corruption in countries where the MNCs' foreign subsidiaries are located. We uncover that country-level corruption has a multi-dimensional impact on MNCs' valuation. We find that the impact of intangibles is less pronounced for MNCs operating primarily in corrupt countries, consistent with the view that the lack of property rights protection and information asymmetry problems are more prevalent in corrupt environments. We also find that the expansion of a MNC network dominated by corrupt countries negatively affects MNCs' valuation, suggesting that investors may recognize it as an additional risk. However, more importantly, we find that geographic diversification in corrupt countries significantly increases firm value if the MNC has high levels of intangibles such as technological know-how and marketing expertise. Assuming that transactions costs in corrupt countries are higher, our findings are consistent with the notion that the advantages from internalizing the cross-border transfer of intangibles are greater in the presence of corruption. Our findings remain unchanged when we account for endogeneity at the country-and firm-level, when we use alternative corruption measures, and when we re-estimate models by omitting MNCs with operations in locations with big “negative” shocks during the sample period. Moreover, we show that firms with expertise in dealing with corruption enjoy greater benefits from internalization.     

Absorptive Capabilities,FDI, and Economic Growth in Transition Economies

This article advances the literature on economic growth and Foreign Direct Investments (FDI) in transition economies by incorporating data on “absorbtive capabilities” of the host economy including R&D indicators and by enhancing the quality of data on FDI. We explore whether countries with accumulated technological and innovative capabilities gain significantly more from FDI. We find that FDI exerts an exogenous positive impact on economic growth, while FDI tends to have a larger impact on economic growth when there is sufficient absorptive capacity and when occurring in technologically more advanced transition economies. The results are robust to different specifications and consideration of endogeneity.     

The relationship between international trade and capital flow: A network perspective

The relationship between international trade and capital flow has been extensively discussed. Using bilateral data from 2001 to 2016, we construct international trade and capital flow networks, defined as a weighted graph in which nodes are countries and edges represent trade and capital flow linkages. Centrality is employed as the main variable in this study to represent the importance of a country in the networks. To gain further insight into the network characteristics, we adopt a turning-parameter centrality to combine both the original degree and strength measurements within the weighted network. Moreover, we develop a new indicator called “partner quality centrality” to identify the quality of neighbors. Within the panel cointegration framework, we argue that a positive long-run equilibrium exists between the trade and capital flow networks as constructed. In addition, we employ a panel causality test to investigate the short-run dynamics, indicating that the international capital flow network has predictive power on the trade network from the short-run perspective but not vice versa.     

Bilateral Export Trade,Outward and Inward FDI: A Dynamic Gravity Model Approach Using Sectoral Data from Malaysia

In light of a change in the foreign direct investment (FDI) landscape such as the rapid growth of outward FDI from Malaysia since 2007, this article ascertains the possible impact of inward and outward FDI on Malaysia’s bilateral export trade at the sectoral level, using a dynamic gravity approach. The findings reveal that both inward and outward FDI are complementary to bilateral export trade in the services, mining, and manufacturing sectors. Furthermore, the distance elasticity and the real effective exchange rate have a different negative impact on different sectors. Overall, the sectoral bilateral exports could not insulate against external events.     

Institutional distance and Turkey’s outward foreign direct investment

This study empirically examines the relation between institutional distance (ID) and Turkey’s outward foreign direct investment (TODI). The empirical results use panel data from 2002 to 2016 to show that TODI is attracted to countries with better institutional quality. We also find that host country political stability, government effectiveness, control of corruption, and rule of law attract TODI. We also document that TODI is positively related to cultural distance (CD) and ID is not moderated by CD.     

Firm-specific forward-looking effective tax rates

This paper computes effective (marginal and average) tax rates that account for bilateral aspects of taxation and, therefore, vary across country-pairs and years. These tax rates serve to estimate the impact of corporate taxation on outbound stocks of bilateral foreign direct investment (FDI) among OECD countries between 1991 and 2002. The findings indicate that outbound FDI is positively related to the parent and host country tax burden and negatively associated with bilateral effective tax rates. Relying only on unilateral (country and time variant) rather than on both unilateral and bilateral (country-pair and time variant) effective tax rates leads to biased estimates of the impact of corporate taxation on FDI.     

Convergence of accounting standards and foreign direct investment

Since the development of the eclectic paradigm by Dunning (1977, 1988, 1993), many studies have investigated different forms of location advantages that attract foreign direct investment (FDI). In this study, we consider accounting standards as a component of the institutional infrastructure of a location and hypothesize that the convergence of domestic and International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS) promotes FDI as it reduces information processing costs for foreign investors.² We also hypothesize that the effect of reduced information costs is stronger for partner countries whose accounting systems showed greater pre-convergence differences because they magnify the facilitating role of accounting standard convergence for FDI. Using bilateral FDI data from 30 OECD countries between 2000 and 2005, we find evidence generally consistent with these hypotheses.     

Bilateral effective tax rates and foreign direct investment

This paper computes effective (marginal and average) tax rates that account for bilateral aspects of taxation and, therefore, vary across country-pairs and years. These tax rates serve to estimate the impact of corporate taxation on outbound stocks of bilateral foreign direct investment (FDI) among OECD countries between 1991 and 2002. The findings indicate that outbound FDI is positively related to the parent and host country tax burden and negatively associated with bilateral effective tax rates. Relying only on unilateral (country and time variant) rather than on both unilateral and bilateral (country-pair and time variant) effective tax rates leads to biased estimates of the impact of corporate taxation on FDI.     

The Dynamic Extreme Co-Movement between Chinese Stock Market and Global Stock Markets

ABSTRACT

We use time-varying Symmetrized Joe-Clayton Copula model to study the extreme co-movement (boom or crash together) between the Chinese stock market and major stock markets in the world from 2007 to 2017, including developed markets and stock markets on “Belt and Road Initiative” (hereafter B.R.I.). We find that the extreme co-movement probability between Chinese market and “Belt and Road Initiative” markets is higher than developed markets at both tails. Then we study important “real” and “non-fundamental” factors affecting the excess co-movement probability, including bilateral trade openness, financial integration, and economic policy uncertainty. The results of panel regression analysis show that: the bilateral financial integration has significant effects over the lower tail dependence between Chinese and developed markets, but does not affect the extreme co-movement between Chinese and B.R.I. markets. And the bilateral trade openness is an important factor for the extreme co-movement at both tail between Chinese and global markets. The economic policy uncertainty index, especially China’s economic policy uncertainty, plays a key role in the extreme co-movement between Chinese and developed markets at both tails. However, it has sizable effects only at the upper tail co-movement between Chinese and B.R.I. markets.     

Do market,resource and knowledge distance impact inbound cross-border acquisition?

With the increasing phenomena of cross-border acquisition (CBA) activities in emerging economies (EE), evidence about “distance” factors that make these economies attractive to home country firms is sparse. Given this background, we employ major locational advantage distance measures such as market, resource, and knowledge distances and examine their impact on the value and number of inbound CBAs in India. We source inbound CBA deal data from the Thomson Reuters Eikon database for the 1990–2020 period during which 47 home countries were making acquisitions of target firms in India. We develop relevant hypotheses based on a comprehensive literature review. We run tobit and negative binomial regression models on a final sample of 921 country-pair-year observations to test the hypotheses. The results show that increasing market and knowledge distances enhanced the value and number of India's inbound CBAs, fueled by the country's growth potential and knowledge base. However, we find no evidence of a role played by resource distance.     

The Effects of Bilateral Tax Treaties on U.S. FDI Activity

The effects of bilateral tax treaties on FDI activity have been unexplored, despite significant ongoing activities by countries to negotiate and ratify these treaties. This paper estimates the impact of bilateral tax treaties using both U.S. inbound and outbound FDI over the period 1980–1999. Robust to a wide variety of alternative specifications, we find little evidence that bilateral tax treaties increase FDI activity, contrary to OECD-stated goals for such treaties.     

外资进入自由化如何影响了中国本土企业创新?

本文以中国政府2002年对《外商投资产业指导目录》的修订所引发的外资自由化为准自然实验,采用倍差法系统评估了外资进入对本土企业创新的影响及其作用机制。研究表明,外资进入不仅显著提高了创新程度,而且还有利于延长本土企业的创新持续时间。此外,我们还发现,知识产权保护强化了外资进入对本土企业创新的促进作用,这一结论在使用专利申请数衡量创新以及采用FDI溢出指标刻画外资进入程度之后依然稳健。最后,我们进一步考察了外资进入影响本土企业创新的作用机制,发现研发能力增强与融资约束程度降低是外资进入促进本土企业创新的两个重要渠道。本文研究为客观评估中国近年来引资政策的绩效提供了微观依据,同时对于如何有效促进本土企业创新具有一定政策启示意义。