Ideological taboos,entry barriers,and FDI attraction: Evidence from China

Developing and transitional countries often impose a wide variety of entry barriers on foreign direct investments (FDIs). One important reason behind these entry barriers is ideological taboos. However, do these taboos actually affect the inflow of FDIs? With the help of China’s “cultural system reform,” this study uses a panel data of 283 prefecture-level cities in China for 1994–2017 and the difference-in-differences method to evaluate the effect of the cultural system reform on regional FDI. We found that the cultural system reform remarkably promoted the inflow of FDIs by deregulating institutions and removing entry barriers, and the attraction of FDI has slowly increased along with the deepening of the reform. Our conclusions still hold after performing several robustness tests, thereby highlighting ideologies as important barriers to the inflow of FDIs into less developed countries.     

优化营商环境与外资企业FDI动机——市场寻求抑或效率寻求

在优化营商环境已成为当前发展中国家引资竞争新优势的背景下,针对优化营商环境影响外资企业FDI动机的考察变得尤为重要。本文在构建企业层面营商环境指数的基础上,考察了发展中国家优化营商环境影响外资企业FDI动机的机制及效应。结论表明:优化营商环境减弱(增强)了外资企业的市场(效率)寻求型FDI动机;内资企业竞争力的增强、外资企业特惠资源的取消和加工贸易型外资企业的存在,使得优化营商环境降低了外资企业的生产率,进而市场(效率)寻求型FDI动机减弱(增强)。细分样本的考察发现,上述结论仅存在于独资企业、工业和低收入国家的外资企业中,对于合资企业、服务业和高收入国家的外资企业,优化营商环境对其FDI动机无显著影响,且生产率的中介效应不存在。本研究从优化营商环境的视角为当前中国引资政策的制定提供了更为具体的政策启示。     

Foreign investment regulation and firm productivity: Granular evidence from Indonesia

When regulating foreign direct investment (FDI), countries often face a trade-off between pursuing national policy interests and suffering efficiency losses due to FDI restrictions. We demonstrate the presence of this trade-off in the case of a protectionist FDI policy in Indonesia. Using a yearly census of Indonesian manufacturing firms from 2000 to 2015, we link product-level changes in binding FDI regulation due to major regulatory tightening to changes in firm-level productivity. Controlling for an extensive set of fixed effects as well as potential political economy drivers of regulation, we show that a tightening of the regulatory environment was successful in reducing foreign capital reliance among regulated firms, and led to increases in FDI among non-regulated firms producing the same product. Despite compensating increases in domestic capital, regulated firms experienced relative productivity losses. This points towards either a less efficient allocation of domestic capital or a general inferiority of domestic capital as compared to foreign investments.     

Migrants and multinational firms: The role of institutional affinity and connectedness in FDI

We examine how, and to what extent, migrants in a host country attract foreign direct investment (FDI) from firms based in their country of origin (CO). Introducing the notion of institutional affinity, we argue that increased institutional affinity and increased connectedness of institutional environments of migrants’ CO and country of residence, make a location attractive to CO firms. Empirical analysis of FDI and migration panel data shows that in addition to the traditional factors influencing FDI patterns, there is a collective migrant effect on FDI, and this effect is statistically significant and economically meaningful for migrants from developing countries.     

Foreign inflows and economic growth: An emiprical study of the SAARC region

The study examines and highlights the impact of selected foreign inflows (aid, trade, FDI, debt and remittances) on the economic growth of the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC) countries. The existent literature lacks a comprehensive analysis of the SAARC countries as countries like Afghanistan, Bhutan and the Maldives have largely been ignored due to the shorter time periods of available data. The study is empirical in nature and utilizes panel data techniques on macroeconomic data for the period 2008–2015. Foreign aid and foreign direct investment are found to impact economic growth positively. Foreign debt and trade flows are found to adversely affect economic growth. No relationship is established between the flow of remittances and the economic growth of these countries. The obtained results are robust to different proxy variables and the addition of macroeconomic variables. For the first time, the study provides policy implications based on the data of all SAARC countries. The study recommends focusing on increasing the inflows of resources in the form of aid and foreign direct investment (FDI) from the developed world to achieve higher economic growth.     

Evolution of FDI flows in the global network: 2003–2012

As one type of international capital flow, FDI maintains its important role in globalization. This article attempts to investigate the evolution of the FDI flows from a network perspective. Based on the bilateral FDI flows data between countries from 2003 to 2012, we construct the global FDI flows network for each year and thus quantify network measures (such as flow volumes and connections); further by analysing the tendency and changes of these network measures during the past 10 years, we delineate the features and dynamics of the FDI flows in the global network. We have the following findings: (a) the flows network changes during and after the crisis, i.e. flow volume fallen down and recovered, and flow connection restructured with more diversity; (b) the global FDI flows network is getting more loosely connected; (c) individual countries vary in different patterns.     

FDI与我国高技术产业技术创新关系研究——基于2005-2014年省际面板数据

改革开放以来，中国大量吸引外商直接投资，期望以此提升国内的技术创新能力。然而，在当前的背景下，我国期望通过FDI提高技术创新能力的目标是否已经实现？我国各地区高新技术产业究竟需不需要外资？等问题值得我们深入研究。实证结果表明：FDI对我国东部地区高技术产业的影响为正，对其他地区影响为负。因此，应当根据我国各地区高技术产业发展水平，实施差异化引资策略，加强知识积累、人力资本建设，为高技术产业的发展提供基础。     

Time and frequency domain causality Testing: The causal linkage between FDI and economic risk for the case of Turkey

This study aims to explore the causal relationship between economic risk and foreign direct investment (FDI) inflows for the case of Turkey. With the aim of establishing robust findings for the research in mind, both traditional and modern causality techniques are utilized; time domain Granger (1969, “Investigating Causal Relations by Econometric Models and Cross-Spectral Methods.” Econometrica 37: 424–438.), Toda and Yamamoto (1995, “Statistical Inference in Vector Autoregressions with Possibly Integrated Processes.” Journal of Econometrics 66 (1–2): 225–250.), Fourier Toda-Yamamoto and frequency domain Breitung and Candelon (2006, “Testing for short- and long-run causality: A frequency-domain approach.” Journal of Econometrics 132 (2): 363–378.) spectral causality test. Our empirical findings reveal that; economic risk changes in Turkey significantly lead to changes in FDI inflows. However, there is no evidence of causality running from FDI to economic risk. The findings imply that economic risk is an essential determinant of FDI inflows in Turkey. Our findings are compatible with historical macroeconomic developments in Turkey and imply important policy implications. The results of this study can be generalized for other emerging economies that have similar macroeconomic environments, in order to create useful policy implications regarding FDI inflow.     

Determinants of China's bilateral trade balance in global value chains

This paper identifies the determinants of China's bilateral trade balance using a new measure based on international input–output data, the so-called ‘trade in value-added’ (TiVA), which can prevent double counting in the estimation of bilateral trade balance. Our results show that using a measure based on gross exports, rather than TiVA, causes relatively large overestimation of the impact of the RMB exchange rate on China's bilateral trade balance. This overestimation is mainly because that the increasing production of exports may require increasing intermediate imports as a consequence of international fragmentation of production in global value chains. In addition, our results also show that the impact of FDI inflows on China's bilateral trade balances depends on the position and role of China and its trading partners in GVCs.     

Domestic political connections and international expansion: It's not only ‘who you know’ that matters

Former politicians on the board of directors bring to the firm domestic political connections and political knowledge. Previous research has mainly highlighted the role of contacts, without fully recognizing the role of political knowledge accumulated at home. By focusing on the effect of domestic political connections on foreign direct investment, we show that domestic political knowledge also shapes foreign expansion. We argue that contacts provided by former politicians may not be useful for foreign expansion whilst their political knowledge can be of help in countries with discretionary governments and with similar institutional environments to the one of the home country.