Foreign direct investment and economic growth: Is more financial development better?

We investigate the extent to which an increase in financial development affects the positive effect of foreign direct investment on economic growth. Although the financial sector is beneficial for economic growth, the effect of further financial development on growth is found to become insignificant. Using a dynamic panel threshold model on 62 middle- and high-income countries spanning the period 1987–2016, we re-examine the possible nonlinearity between finance, foreign direct investment, and growth. Consistent with the “vanishing effect” of financial development, we find significant evidence that foreign direct investment fosters growth in general, but the growth effect of foreign direct investment becomes negligible when the ratio of private sector credit to gross domestic product exceeds 95.6%. This finding is robust to different econometric methods, various subsamples and interaction analyses, and distinct financial development indicators.     

辽宁省金融脆弱性研究

当前关于金融脆弱性的研究集中于国家这一宏观层面，对于省域金融脆弱性的研究还存在相当大的研究空间。正是基于这样一种相对创新性的视角，在对金融脆弱性现有研究进行综述的基础上对辽宁省的金融脆弱性的诱因进行了分析，并提出推动非银行金融机构的发展、拓展规模较大的银行的非利息收益以提升银行盈利能力以及全力清除不良贷款是应对辽宁省金融脆弱性的可行策略。     

Safety risk and international investment decisions

We identify and demonstrate the merit of a novel institutional factor, safety risk, which likely affects multinational corporations’ (MNCs’) international investment decisions. Safety risk refers to the extent to which security and physical well-being are endangered due to normalized aggression and criminality in society. Despite concerns from executives and policymakers, safety risk has attracted little research attention. We validate a safety risk measure and evaluate the construct’s effect on MNCs’ investments. The findings indicate that countries’ safety risk deters MNCs from investing. Further, in post hoc analyses, firms’ prior experiences with safety risk and countries’ private security investments moderated this relationship.     

Survival of full versus partial acquisitions: The moderating role of firm’s internationalization experience,cultural distance,and host country context characteristics

The high divestment rates of acquired foreign units indicate challenges connected to planning and management of foreign acquisitions. In this paper we analyze the moderating effect of internal and external variables on the relationship between acquirers’ ownership strategy and survival of acquired foreign units. We test our hypotheses on a sample of 1275 acquisitions conducted by Finnish firms in various countries during the period 1980–2005. The results indicate that the probability of survival does not differ significantly between full and partial acquisitions. We further find that the likelihood of survival in full, relative to partial acquisitions, is positively associated with the acquisition-specific experience, but inversely related to general international and target country experience. The results also reveal that the positive impact of full acquisitions is stronger if the acquisitions are made in culturally similar countries, in less developed economies, and in markets where the country risk has increased after entry.     

Policy uncertainty and overseas property purchases: Evidence from China

A political leadership transition occurs in China every five years. This shift in leadership is accompanied by tremendous uncertainty within Chinese society, particularly for the nation's wealthy people. Examining private residential property transaction data in Singapore, this paper reveals that the number of transactions by Chinese mainland buyers increases by half during political transitions that occurred between 1998 and 2013, in comparison to buyers from Malaysia, the US, and Hong Kong.     

Aid,policies and growth: a nonlinear reassessment

ABSTRACT

The association between foreign aid and growth has been controversial for decades and the evidence is quite mixed with results sensitive to data samples and modelling approaches. We reassess the relationship between aid, policy and growth implementing a novel semiparametric estimation method that allows for nonlinearities and controls for endogeneity. The results show that the aid-policy-growth relationship is complex. Aid inflows do not seem growth-enhancing, except at very high levels (above 7% of Aid/GDP), whereas the effect may arrive with a lag at lower levels. Policy improvements are positively correlated with growth at high policy levels (above the median value) but better policies do not increase aid effectiveness.     

Welfare and equity impacts of cross-border factor mobility in Bangladesh: A general equilibrium analysis

We develop a dynamic computable general equilibrium model with cross-border factor mobility to assess the impacts of a foreign wage shock and the effects of counteractive policy measures in Bangladesh. The model features migration of workers and foreign direct investment (FDI) in the ready-made garments (RMG) sector. Our simulation results show that returning migrants induced by a foreign wage fall would reduce household welfare by lowering wages and increasing unemployment, particularly for unskilled workers in the domestic labor market. To counteract this negative shock, FDI promotion in the RMG sector and a human-capital development program are considered. The former policy minimizes the negative impacts of the foreign labor market shock, while a combination of both policies is more equitable.     

Relationship between foreign capital flows,domestic investment and savings in the SADC region

The importance of foreign capital in the domestic economy cannot be underestimated as it bridges the gap between domestic capital demand and supply. Given this background the paper studies the relationship between the different types of foreign capital flows in the Southern Africa Development Region (SADC) region – foreign direct investment (FDI), remittances, cross border bank flows (CBF), overseas development assistance (ODA) – and domestic savings and investment, employing the panel cointegration test and the dynamic ordinary least squares method (DOLS). The empirical results reveal that there is a strong positive relationship between domestic investment and domestic savings, FDI and remittances. These findings indicate that FDI remittances help in overcoming the limits on the domestic capital formation in the SADC region through permitting a rate of investment which is in excess of that which can be generated by domestic savings. Important policy implications on attracting foreign capital flows are discussed in the paper.     

Involuntary excess reserve and bankers’ remuneration: evidence from Chinese banks

This article analyses the effects of involuntary excess reserves (IER) on bankers’ remuneration and the penalty associated with bank risk-taking if discovered. The study finds that IER help conceal tail risks, improves bankers’ performance and remuneration. However, the risks once discovered result in heavy penalties on bankers’ remuneration. The study extends the agency theory to the context where banks hold large IER.