Good and useless FDI: The growth effects of greenfield investment and mergers and acquisitions

We explore the effect of foreign direct investment (FDI) on economic growth, distinguishing between mergers and acquisitions (M&As) and “greenfield” investment. A simple model underlines that, unlike greenfield investment, M&As partly represent a rent accruing to previous owners, and do not necessarily contribute to expanding the host country's capital stock. Greenfield FDI should therefore have a stronger impact on growth than M&A sales. This hypothesis is supported by our empirical results that are based on a panel of up to 127 industrialized, emerging, and developing countries over 1990 to 2010.     

Foreign Capital and Urban Congestion in Emerging Markets

Traditional literature emphasizes the role of foreign capital, especially foreign direct investment (FDI) in explaining the high growth rates that many emerging economies have enjoyed during 1990s and 2000s. The present paper accepts this conventional wisdom but argues that the FDI has also created problems of urban sprawl and congestion that would not be so intense if economic development had primarily come from domestic sources. This is because the FDI is typically concentrated in urban areas that abound in manufacturing and it neglects the rural areas where agriculture predominates. The paper suggests that a small tax on foreign capital tends to mitigate the side effects of foreign investment.     

城市数字经济发展能够影响FDI区位选择吗？

本文在理论分析数字经济影响FDI区位选择的内在机理基础上，采用中国2011—2018年284个地级城市作为研究样本，构建数字经济指数，运用双向固定效应模型实证分析数字经济对FDI区位选择的影响，并进一步检验数字经济影响FDI的间接作用机制和系列异质性特征。结果显示，数字经济发展促进了城市FDI的流入，并以间接影响制造业发展加速FDI流入，经过各种稳健性检验后结论依然成立；异质性分析表明，在实施宽带中国的城市、东部地区和数字经济发展水平高的城市，数字经济对强化FDI区位选择的影响更加显著；机制分析表明，数字经济通过推动数字金融、刺激居民创业渠道影响FDI。这些发现为新时期中国夯实数字经济发展，扩大对外开放并稳定外资找到了新思路并提供了实证依据。     

我国FDI和OFDI技术溢出效应的实证检验

对国内外有关国际直接投资渠道的技术溢出的研究文献进行了梳理,测算了1994—2008年我国以外商直接投资和对外直接投资反映的外国R&D资本存量,并建立了R&D溢出回归模型,对其进行回归分析。研究结果显示:国内R&D资本和外商直接投资对我国全要素生产率的提升具有促进作用,且国内R&D资本的作用更大;对外直接投资对我国全要素生产率的提升有微弱的阻碍作用。因此,在政策层面上应继续加大国内R&D支出,加强外商直接投资,积极开展对外直接投资,以推动我国技术进步。     

The impact of foreign direct investment on innovation at domestic firms: Evidence from the deregulation of foreign investment in China

This paper studies the impact of foreign direct investment (FDI) on innovation by domestic firms in China. A difference-in-difference estimation strategy yields causal evidence by exploiting China's deregulation of FDI in 2002. Analysis of a matched firm–patent data set from 1998 to 2007 shows that both the quantity and quality of innovation by domestic firms benefited from the presence of FDI. Emphasizing the importance of knowledge spillover from FDI in similar technology domains, the authors examine the role of horizontal FDI and FDI in technologically close industries—those sharing similar technology domains. Findings show that the latter generates much more substantial positive spillover than the former. The paper also shows that knowledge spillover from FDI in similar technology domains is not driven by input–output linkages. In addition, the spillover effect is stronger in cities with higher human capital stock and firms with higher absorptive capacity.     

Foreign Debt,Foreign Direct Investment and Volatility

We investigate how foreign debt and foreign direct investment (FDI) affect the growth and welfare of a stochastically growing small open economy. First, we find that foreign debt influences the growth of domestic wealth by lowering the cost of capital, while FDI affects the country's welfare by providing an additional source of permanent income. Second, a decline in domestic investment may improve domestic welfare as FDI replaces the gap. Even when the welfare deteriorates, its magnitude is mitigated, leaving more room for discretionary fiscal policy. Third, a fiscal policy aimed to stabilize domestic output fluctuations needs to be conducted not to crowd out the welfare benefit of FDI too much. Fourth, an economy with both types of foreign capital experiences wider welfare swings by external volatility shocks than the one with foreign debt alone, while the welfare effects from domestic volatility shocks are mitigated. The welfare effects of fiscal shocks are much smaller with both types of foreign capital. Lastly, the first-best labor income tax covers the government absorption by the labor's share of total output, and the capital income tax covers the rest. Investment is penalized or subsidized depending on the social marginal cost-gain differential.     

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.     

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.     

Profit taxation and the mode of foreign market entry

Abstract This paper studies the role of profit taxation for an international firm's decision upon how to penetrate a foreign market – through exports or through foreign direct investment (FDI) and local supply. We show that with harmonized taxes the international firm may choose FDI even though this has welfare costs from a global point of view. With tax competition, the host country can enforce exporting instead of FDI. This leads to a Nash equilibrium associated with higher world welfare than harmonized taxes. Thus, because of the effect on entry mode, tax competition provides heretofore unexplored benefits as compared to tax harmonization.     

Shouldn't Physical Capital Also Matter for Multinational Enterprise Activity?

The foreign direct investment (FDI) literature has generally failed to find strong systematic evidence of “vertical” motivations in bilateral aggregate FDI and foreign affiliate sales (FAS) data, despite recent evidence of vertical FDI in firm‐level data. Moreover, a Bayesian analysis of the empirical determinants of FDI (and FAS) flows reveals that the parent country's physical capital per worker has a strong positive effect on FDI alongside typical gravity‐equation variables; however, this variable is ignored in the knowledge‐capital (KC) model and most empirical work. We address these two puzzles by introducing relative factor endowment differences into the three‐factor, three‐country knowledge and physical capital extension of the 2 × 2 × 2 KC model. Using a numerical version of our model, we show that horizontal and vertical multinational enterprises' (MNEs') headquarters surface in different parts of the Edgeworth box relating the parent country's skilled labor share relative to its physical capital share (of the parent's and host's endowments). The key economic insight is that horizontal MNE headquarters will be relatively more abundant than vertical MNE headquarters in countries that are abundant in physical capital relative to skilled labor, because of the multi‐plant (single‐plant) structure of horizontal (vertical) MNEs—assuming plants (headquarters) use physical capital (skilled labor) relatively intensively in their setups. The theoretical relationships suggest augmenting empirical FAS gravity equations with (polynomials of) the parent's skilled labor share alongside the parent's physical capital share to explain in aggregate bilateral data the coexistence of horizontal and vertical FAS. The theoretical and empirical results shed light on the positive effect of parent's physical capital share on FAS flows, but also suggest that MNE headquarters may be prominent in parent countries with relatively high and low skilled labor shares—once physical capital is accounted for—a result not suggested by the two‐factor KC model.     

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.     

International Reserves and the Composition of Foreign Equity Investment

This paper studies the effect of central banks' international reserve hoardings on the composition of foreign equity investment. Specifically, it examines whether reserves affect the share of foreign portfolio equity investment (PEI) in total foreign equity investment, which includes both PEI and foreign direct investment (FDI). Foreign investors' decisions regarding the location and the type of equity capital investment might be influenced by a country's level of international reserves. In a simple theoretical model, it is shown that higher reserves, thanks to their ability to lower exchange rate risk, reduce the risk premium of PEI. Hence, higher reserves are expected to increase the inflow of PEI relative to FDI. This hypothesis is tested for a sample of 76 developing countries during the period 1980–2010 using different estimation methods, model specifications and data samples. The results suggest that higher levels of reserves are associated with a larger share of PEI relative to FDI. This result points to a collateral benefit of reserves that has been neglected so far. Reserves may contribute to develop domestic financial markets and facilitate domestic firms' access to foreign portfolio equity financing. In addition, this paper finds a strong negative effect of the global financial crisis beginning in 2008 on the share of PEI, which confirms the hypothesis that PEI is more crisis‐dependent than FDI.     

Is Foreign Direct Investment “Gender Blind”? Women's Rights as a Determinant of US FDI

The impact of women's rights on a country's competitiveness in the global economy is a source of contention. While educational opportunities for women, as well as political empowerment, are linked to a variety of positive outcomes, the impact of economic rights is mixed. Toward better understanding these issues, we focus on the role of women's rights in attracting foreign direct investment (FDI). Though foreign capital plays a key role in the development strategies of many countries, and many of the growth areas in FDI rely heavily on women's labor, extant literature on the determinants of FDI largely ignores gender. To gain insight into these issues, we examine the impact of women's political, economic, and educational rights across four different types of US FDI into the developing world. We find a mixed relationship between women's rights and FDI that varies across industrial sectors.     

Has Abenomics Succeeded in Raising Japan's Inward Foreign Direct Investment?

Japan is known to have an exceptionally low level of inward foreign direct investment (FDI). The promotion of inward FDI is one of the policy goals of Abenomics structural reforms. This present paper studies the accumulation of Japan's inward FDI stock during the first 3 years of Abenomics (2012–2015), and finds no evidence that Japan's inward FDI stock increased more than the trend before Abenomics started would have predicted. A comparison of the main policies for promoting inward FDI that have been implemented to the real and perceived impediments to inward FDI reveals that it may be advisable to shift the emphasis of the policy to address more regulatory and administrative issues and to reduce the cost of doing business in Japan.     

外商直接投资对皖江城市带溢出效应的实证分析——基于皖江城市带面板数据研究

皖江城市带承接产业转移示范区作为迄今为止国务院批复的全国唯一一个以产业转移为主题的示范区,外资的大量进入是必然趋势。文章利用2006-2009年皖江城市带9个城市的面板数据和FGLS方法,对皖江城市带外商直接投资的产出效应和技术溢出效应进行了分析。研究表明皖江城市带FDI确实带来了产出的增长,但是对技术溢出的效应不显著。本土的自主研发投入无论是对产出效应还是对技术溢出效应都产生了积极的影响,是创新能力形成的主要因素。尽管人力资本制约了皖江城市带的技术进步,但是FDI与人力资本相结合,促进了皖江城市带的技术进步。皖江城市带FDI并没有通过本土的研发资本投入实现技术外溢效应。     

The composition of foreign capital stocks in South Africa: The role of institutions,domestic risk and neighbourhood effects

Foreign capital inflows are an important source of funds to finance investment in developing economies. International finance literature is therefore concerned with how institutional factors like property rights and corruption affect foreign capital inflows. We investigate the determinants of the absolute volumes and composition of foreign capital stocks in South Africa, focusing on the role played by institutional quality (property rights), domestic default risk and neighbourhood effects as potential determinants. The empirical results show that secure property rights and low default risk in the host country positively affect the absolute volumes of both long-term foreign capital and short-term foreign capital, but tilt the composition in favour of long-term foreign capital. Empirical results also demonstrate the existence of neighbourhood effects where the institutional environment in Zimbabwe significantly impacts on South Africa's foreign capital inflows. In this regard, weak property rights in Zimbabwe lead to an increase in South Africa's foreign direct investment (FDI), but a reduction in South Africa's portfolio investment. This suggests that Zimbabwe and South Africa compete for foreign direct investment in similar sectors, and present two alternative investment destinations to foreign investors. By contrast, weak property rights in Zimbabwe appear to raise the perceived risk for portfolio investment in South Africa.     

Foreign Capital, Urban Unemployment, and Economic Growth

A three-sector endogenous growth model, is used to study the effects of foreign direct investment (FDI) on the dynamics of urban unemployment, labour income, and capital income as well as national welfare in a Harris–Todaro economy. It is shown that more FDI can affect the economy's dynamics and national welfare positively or negatively. The paper derives conditions as to how the growth rate and welfare effects of FDI relate to the intersectoral mobility of capital, the destination of FDI, the elasticities of substitution, and the factor intensities of the final good production.     

Product Lifetime: A Determinant of Entry Decision by Multinational Firms

Existing literature on the role of intellectual property rights (IPR) protection has painted an ambiguous picture about the size of the effects of stronger IPR on the choice of the multinational firm’s mode of entry into foreign market. Some empirical studies suggest that improving IPR in recipient countries will have higher effect on licensing, while others found larger effect on foreign direct investment (FDI). The available indices of protection only measure country-wide characteristics and do not pick inter-industry variation, while the data show significant differences in losses of US multinationals by industry. In this paper, we introduce and empirically estimate a new dimension to multinational firm’s decision to enter a foreign market—a parameter that reflects the length of positive profits that the firm can earn in various industries. We dub the estimated parameter a perceived time of rent extraction. The introduction of the time parameter allows us to differentiate the effects of stronger IPR on the entry modes in different industries and reconcile the ambiguity results in the literature. Particularly, strengthening IPR has higher impact on FDI in industries with shorter rent extraction time, while licensing is affected more than FDI in industries with longer rent extraction time.     

Gradualism In Tax Treaties With Irreversible Foreign Direct Investment*

Bilateral tax treaties govern host country taxation for most of the world's foreign direct investment (FDI). To explain why the tax rates used under these treaties are gradually falling we consider two‐way capital flows with irreversible FDI. The extent of irreversibility determines the magnitude of initial tax reductions. When Pareto‐optimal taxes are not initially self‐enforcing, more modest tax reductions generate an increase in irreversible bilateral FDI so that further tax reductions become self‐enforcing. Depending on the extent of irreversibility and asymmetry, Pareto‐optimal tax rates may be obtainable in the long run.     

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.