The color of money: The effects of foreign direct investment on economic growth in transition economies

During the initial phase of transformation to a market economy many of the Eastern European and Baltic countries experienced an initial decline of output. This paper explains, both theoretically and empirically, why they experienced negative growth initially, and how some of them started to get over and recorded positive growth recently. As a vehicle to transfer technology and managerial skills to the transition economies, as well as to increase capital work, foreign direct investment (FDI) is regarded important. Production function with a low elasticity of substitution between two inputs is employed to capture the dynamic short-run movement of these economies. Cross-sectional and panel data, are utilized to analyze the short-run dynamic movement of equilibrium paths of transformation to a market economy. The findings confirm that total factor productivity and GDP in the region grew together with the inflow of FDI, and the marginal contribution of FDI to growth is greater than that of domestic investment. JEL no. O50, P39, F21 This project is financially supproted by the ARC Small Grant, Department Research Grant, Department of Economics, UWA and Division Research Grant, Commerce, Division, Lincoln University.