Venture Capital Funds, Financial Foreign Direct Investment and the Generation of Local Comparative Advantage in the Technology Sector in Israel

The rapid development of a new comparative advantage in thehi-tech sector in Israel in the period 1995–2005 providesan example of a new form of foreign direct investment (FDI).Unlike traditional FDI, this new form of international investment,that we dubbed financial foreign direct investment (FFDI), involvescapital flows from developed countries to small countries andto the emerging markets. The providers of this capital, definedin our study as "sector-specific capital", are financial andrisk intermediaries like venture capital funds and private equityfunds. Like multinational enterprises they transfer factorsof production across borders seeking to maximize their value.In doing so, they are a part of a process of generating newcomparative advantages. We focus on the case of Israel and showthat, due to the inherent asymmetry, it takes government actionto trigger the process of importing sector-specific capitalto Israel primarily from the US capital market, but once theprocess has begun, it has led to economic growth via reducingtangible and intangible trade costs, creating trust and thusgenerating competitive advantage for innovative technology firmsfrom Israel in the global markets.