外商直接投资、贸易条件与政策选择

改革开放以来,我国吸引的外商直接投资(FDI)一直呈逐年上升趋势,外资企业进出口占我国对外贸易的比重也呈上升趋势,而我国的价格贸易条件则呈现下降的趋势。本文借助外商直接投资的主体——外商投资企业的进出口与价格贸易条件进行实证分析,提出我国对外商投资的政策应从"招商引资"转变为"招商选资"。     

加入世贸组织之后中国外资政策的变化与韩国企业的对华投资

中国在加入世界贸易组织以后,利用外资的政策有了明显的变化。不仅体现在对投资的行业进行了调整上,而且对外资逐步地实行国民待遇并加强对外资企业的管理。本文在分析中国利用外资政策变化的基础上,从投资规模、投资结构、投资主体以及投资收益等方面分析中国利用外资政策变化对韩国对华直接投资的影响。     

Cross-Country Evidence on the Effectiveness of Foreign Investment Policies

This study empirically evaluates the effectiveness of government policies toward foreign enterprises and foreign direct investment activity. Foreign investment policies are difficult to quantify, but we overcome this difficulty by employing an index that reflects a country's general regulatory environment and treatment of foreign businesses. The evidence on the effectiveness of foreign investment policy measures is captured by a panel regression model, which pools together a cross-section of 153 countries over the period 1995–2001. The statistically significant explanatory power of the policy index is robust to the presence of a host of conditioning variables, some of which serve as fundamental foreign investment determinants that lie largely outside the direct control of national policy.     

Corruption’s impact on foreign portfolio investment

Corruption has significant effects on a nation’s financial markets through its adverse impact on foreign portfolio investment (FPI). Yet, the effects of corruption on FPI are nonlinear and reverse J-shaped, with intermediate levels of corruption yielding the most negative effects. Highly transparent nations, where a “level playing field” exists between foreign and local investors due to lack of information asymmetries related to corruption, attract the most foreign investment. However, at the margin, very corrupt countries attract more investment than moderately corrupt countries because a “perverse level playing field” in the former countries may put foreigners and locals on an even footing in terms of resolving asymmetric information problems. This nonlinear pattern is consistent with foreign investors’ desire to trade in markets where they are not at an informational disadvantage.     

Trade openness,foreign direct investment,and finance-growth nexus in the Eurozone countries

The paper investigates causal relationships between trade openness, foreign direct investment, financial development, and economic growth in 19 Eurozone countries over the period 1988–2013. Using a panel vector error-correction model (VECM), the empirical results show that these variables are cointegrated. The study shows that a combination of opening the Eurozone countries for trade and fostering their financial and economic development have elevated inflows of foreign direct investment into the region in the long run. At the same time, increasing inflows of foreign direct investment in the short run have propelled economic growth, which in return has strengthened the role of financial development and international trade to sustain economic growth in the region through feedback effects. The empirical results have important policy implications for countries in the Eurozone, especially those who face challenges as a result of lack of confidence in their financial system and those who face a sovereign debt crisis.     

Foreign institutional investors and dividend policy: Evidence from China

This study examines whether foreign institutional investment influences firms’ dividend policies. Using data from all domestically listed nonfinancial firms in China during the period of 2003–2013, we find that foreign shareholding influences dividend decisions and vice versa.Furthermore, changes in dividend payments over time positively affect subsequent changes in foreign shareholding, but the opposite is not true. Our study indicates that foreign institutional investors do not change firms’ future dividend payments once they have made their investment choices in China. Moreover, they self-select into Chinese firms that pay high dividends. Our evidence suggests that in an institutional setting where foreign investors have tightly restricted access to local securities markets and a relatively high risk of expropriation by controlling shareholders exists, firms can use dividends to signal good investment opportunities to foreign investors.     

Foreign influence and welfare

How do foreign interests influence policy? How are trade policies and the viability of trade agreements affected? What are the welfare implications of such foreign influence? In this paper we develop a model of foreign influence and apply it to the study of optimal tariffs. In a two-country voting model of electoral competition, we allow the incumbent party in each country to take costly actions that probabilistically affect the electoral outcome in the other country. We show that policies end up maximizing a weighted sum of domestic and foreign welfare. Using this formulation we show that foreign influence increases aggregate world welfare when there are no other means of alleviating the externalities that arise from cross-border effects of policies. In contrast, when countries can engage in international agreements, foreign influence can prove harmful as powerful countries may refuse to offer concessions. We also show that power imbalances are particularly detrimental to cooperation when they are positively correlated with economic size.     

中国反规避立法之探索

规避和反规避是国际贸易领域中的一个新问题,这一问题对各国的贸易影响较大。而中国近几年来已成为吸引外商直接投资(FDI)最多的国家之一,在这之中又不可避免会存在一部分国外直接投资厂商将我国作为“第三国组装规避”的基地或为规避我国的反倾销税而进行投资的情景。作为一个刚加入WTO不满4年并继续受贸易政策过渡性审议机制条款约束的国家,我国在反规避立法时应该注意以下几个原则:原产地规则先导的循序渐进原则、公正合理并与WTO逐步接轨的原则,以及注重公共利益的原则。     

Does the Quality of Investment Protection Affect FDI Flows to Developing Countries? Evidence from Latin America

Studies on the impact of international investment agreements (IIAs), including bilateral investment treaties (BITs), on foreign direct investment (FDI) inflows have been inconclusive. This paper contributes to the debate about the effectiveness of IIAs using an original database that differentiates between investment agreements according to the quality of investor protection, and which covers a wide variety of trade and investment agreements signed and ratified in the Americas. We find evidence that in the least likely case of south–south FDI flows, high‐quality international investment treaties have a demonstrable effect on foreign direct investment inflows. Moreover, international investment agreements appear to be most effective in a context of deeper economic integration. That is, they work better when they provide higher quality protection to investors and when they are combined with other preferential economic integration agreements, such as trade agreements.     

我国外资政策调整的博弈分析

文章从博弈论的角度入手,把我国政府与外商投资者作为两个博弈主体,通过对外资优惠政策和外商的直接投资的动态博弈分析,得到子博弈精炼纳什均衡解,然后通过对该均衡解的详细分析得出一系列的结论。在此基础上,得出了我国改革开放初期的外资政策和以后的外资政策的调整路线与博弈分析的结果是吻合的,并得出了充分利用外资的关键是改善投资环境。     

Induced clean technology adoption and international trade with heterogeneous firms

This paper introduces an environmental externality and factor-biased technology adoption into a trade model with heterogeneous firms. This study explores how firms’ decisions of technology adoption and of exports are affected by openness to trade and the stringency of environmental regulations. It shows that: (1) these decisions induced by tightened environmental policies depend upon whether the upgraded technology is labor-biased or emission-biased; (2) the environmental impact of trade cost reductions on the aggregate emissions and price of emissions permits varies with the factor-biased feature; and (3) regardless of the factor-biased feature, the trade cost reduction induces firms to export and to upgrade the factor-biased technology, while it forces the least productive firms to exit the market. Moreover, the model is further calibrated to simulate policy scenarios of bilateral and unilateral variations in trade variable costs and environmental policies. The bilateral reduction of emissions cap may contribute to welfare gains in both home and foreign countries. The unilateral action of tightening environmental policy in the home country may hurt the home country, but makes the foreign country better off.     

论海外直接投资与贸易的关系

从理论上讲,对外直接投资与国际贸易的关系即存在互补性,也具有相互替代性,这要根据母国(或跨国公司)投资的动机、类型和发展阶段而定.本文回顾了发达国家和发展中国家在此方面的实践,并结合我国海外投资与贸易出口的实际,按几个行业分别分析了海外投资与贸易的互补或替代关系.论文认为,由于投资行业的特点和投资区域的不同,海外投资对我国对外贸易的影响要视具体的投资行业和投资区域而定.从目前看,政府应该给予具有贸易创造效应的海外投资在政策上的大力支持.     

Growing up with capital flows

We examine the capital flows-domestic investment relationship for 60 developing countries from 1979 to 1999. In the 1990s, even as liberalization attracted new flows, foreign capital stimulated less domestic investment than in the preceding decade. With greater financial integration, governments accumulated more international reserves and domestic residents diversified by investing abroad. Foreign investors were also motivated by diversification objectives rather than by unmet investment needs. Inflows were channeled increasingly through portfolio flows—or through foreign direct investment (FDI) with the characteristics of portfolio capital—resulting in weak investment stimulus. However, stronger policy environments strengthened the link between inflows and investment.     

Foreign Direct Investment in Sub-Saharan Africa: Motivating Factors and Policy Issues

Sub-Saharan Africa's (SSA) foreign direct investment (FDI) share has persistently averaged 1% of global flows. The location decision and perceptions of investors are therefore instructive for policy making. This article factor analyses a survey of perceptions, operations, and motivations of 758 foreign investors in 10 SSA countries. We find that the provision of transaction cost–reducing information on industries and markets and utility services to investors before and after a firm's FDI decision are significant factors. FDI location decision in SSA is influenced strongly by political economy considerations. Labor and production input variables are not influential.     

Doing business in Malaysia

The importance of international trade to the Malaysian economy can hardly be exaggerated. Trade represents a lifeline for the Malaysian economy. Export‐oriented industrialization in the 1990s converted the labor‐surplus economy into a labor‐deficit one and then back to a labor‐surplus one in 2000 and beyond. The incidence of poverty has fallen by half since the early 1980s. Trade has also contributed much to the structural transformation and modernization of the economy. Had Malaysia been a closed economy, Malaysia would have shared the same fate as some other less developed countries that remain economically backward. Its external trade policy has paved the way for greater inflows of foreign direct investment, as foreign direct investors are not so much interested in serving the small domestic market as serving the vast external market. The large inflows of foreign direct investment have conferred positive effects on the domestic economy. This has meant significant improvements in the overall living standards for the Malaysians. Internationalization has provided employment opportunities, thereby raising their living standards through higher and more stable earnings. © 2009 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.     

Foreign Direct Investment and Economic Growth in EP and IS Countries: The Role of Corruption

Corruption is understood as an act in which the power of public office is used for personal gain in a manner that contravenes the rules established by the governing structures of a society. This study attempts to offer an extension to the empirical model employed by Balasubramanyam et al. (1996 ) by analysing how FDI determines economic growth within the new growth theory framework when the degree of corruption is considered. Thus, the study seeks to examine the way in which corruption can have an impact on the economic growth of developing countries whose trade strategies differ (either IS and EP). It suggests that further insight can be gained by considering how corruption might interact with the trade policy in affecting economic growth. This is examined using a fixed‐effects, simultaneous equation model for 17 countries over the period 1994–2004. The results show that the level of corruption strongly and negatively influences foreign direct investment in both IS and EP countries. However, when the corruption index is interacted with domestic investment, the influence on foreign direct investment is positive and significant for IS countries only. The most interesting outcome of the study is the effect of the interaction term between foreign direct investment and the corruption perception index on economic growth, which is found to be greater in magnitude for the EP countries than for the IS countries.     

Reform and opening up in the new era: China trade policy review

This paper reviews the major changes in China's trade policies in the last few years. During this period, the adjustment of trade policies has developed in the following ways: first, the establishment of free trade zones, which emphasises the importance of advanced systems rather than preferential policies; second, putting forward the “Belt & Road” Initiative, which indicates China's new stage of development from “bringing in” to “going out”; third, holding import expos, which marks an era when China's foreign trade development has shifted from focusing on exports only to focusing on both exports and imports; fourth, reducing entry barriers of foreign capital, which demonstrates that the policy framework for FDI has gradually changed from a positive list to a negative list; fifth, promoting trade negotiations, which reflects that China has actively participated in bilateral, regional and multilateral trade talks; and finally, building up new experimental fields of reform and opening up, which shows evidence that a new generation of special economic zones is emerging.     

India: Trade Policy Review

The review of India's trade policy by the WTO, the third of its kind, is in three parts: the report by the WTO secretariat, a statement by the government of India and minutes of the discussion of the report by the trade policy review board. The review provides detailed information not only on India's trade and foreign investment policies but also an analytical review of India's export and economic performance. The review notes that India has made considerable progress with the liberalisation of its trade and investment regime, but it has a long way to go if it were to achieve a growth rate of eight to nine per cent, the stated objective of the policy makers. This paper, drawing upon the material in the report, analyses India's growth prospects and endorses the broad conclusions of the report.     

Trade and Exchange Rate Policies in Formerly Centrally Planned Economies

This paper examines the international economic policies of the eastern European and Soviet Successes States in the early 1990s which provide one of those wide‐open windows of opportunity when powerful vested interests are not lobbying for retention of an existing tariff structure. Moreover, the simultaneous abandonment of central planning by over two dozen countries provided a natural experiment in which a range of differing policies might have been pursued. Policymakers in transition economies have generally ended up pursuing liberal non‐discriminatory trade and foreign exchange policies. There are exceptions and the majority may be wrong, but the presumption is that, perhaps after a learning or trial‐and‐error process, decision makers have found the rules of thumb suggested by economists to be their best guide to international economic policy. This paper notes that integration of transition economies into the global trading system has been surprisingly successful. Almost all the countries in transition from central planning have accepted the WTO rule‐based system in principle, even if there are variations in trade policies and performance, and have generally pursued multilateral non‐discriminatory trade policies. In particular, the potential danger of regionalism proving more attractive than multilateralism has not eventuated. The revealed behaviour of policymakers suggests that trade liberalisation is a good rule of thumb and regional groupings among transition economies have been insignificant. Despite a proliferation of new currencies, varying exchange rate regimes, and differing degrees of currency convertibility, the general pattern has been to accept convertibility for current account transdactions, and in many cases to extend this to a de jure commitment and to allow substantial capital account convertibility. A general policy conclusion in favour of more open and non‐discriminatory trade and exchange policies have passed the test of acceptability by policymakers in over two‐dozen countries in this category.     

China R&D: A High-Tech Field of Dreams1

This study highlights the rapid pace at which new commercial research and development (R&D) centres are being established by foreign investors in the People's Republic of China (PRC). It recounts the motivations behind this growing trend, subtle changes in this trend over time, some lessons learned, and asks what it could mean for future Asia-Pacific relations. The essay emphasizes China's distinct role in attracting R&D through its extensive investment in municipal services, infrastructure and regulatory reforms as well as policy incentives that have helped to spur ever-greater levels of foreign R&D investment over the past decade.