We examine the impact of capital account policies on FDI inflows. Using an annual panel dataset of 83 developing and developed countries for 1984-2000, we find that capital account openness is positively but only very moderately associated with the amount of FDI inflows after controlling for other macroeconomic and institutional measures. To a large extent, other country characteristics seem to...

Multinational firms circumvent capital controls by distorting their reported trade patterns, profitability, and dividend repatriations. The changed patterns of reported profits in response to capital controls are comparable to the effects of a 24% difference in corporate tax rates. The costliness of these acts of evasion combined with the significantly higher interest rates faced by multination...

This paper suggests that the use of investment incentives focusing exclusively on foreign firms, although motivated in some cases from a theoretical point of view, is generally not an efficient way to raise national welfare. The main reason is that the strongest theoretical motive for financial subsidies to inward FDI – spillovers of foreign technology and skills to local industry – is not an a...

This paper assesses the effect of openness on corruption, using foreign direct investment (FDI) inflows as a measure of openness, after trade intensity is accounted for. We use a broad cross section of countries over the period 1970 to 1994 and address the issue of causality with a new set of instrumental variables relying on geographical and cultural distance between the FDI exporting and reci...

The international business literature presents an interesting intellectual puzzle regarding the effect of political instability and political risk on foreign direct investment (FDI). Survey evidence shows that multinational executives take into account political instability in making investment decisions, while econometric studies produce conflicting findings. In this paper, I offer a new theor...

How do foreign trade and foreign direct investment affect regional inequality? Foreign trade and investment may affect internal economic geography, and the resulting industry agglomeration may contribute to regional inequality. This paper provides empirical evidence supporting this linkage. The results indicate that the increasing regional inequality in China has been accompanied by an increase...

This study investigates the impact of investment on the economic growth of Pakistan. The data used in this study were collected from the period of 1981 to 2010. Multiple regression technique is used to analyze the relationship between dependent variable (gross domestic production) and independent variables (public investment, private investment and foreign direct investment). It is concluded al...

On the basis of Dunning’s Investment Development Path (IDP) hypothesis, this paper tests the macroeconomic determinants of Chinese Offshore Direct Investment (ODI) from a home-country perspective. We review the recent firmand country-level studies on determinants of Chinese ODI. We propose a model and test seven home-country macroeconomic variables as determinants of Chinese ODI. Our results re...

Using a three-sector general equilibrium model with non-traded goods, we investigate the impact of foreign direct investment on the real wages of skilled and unskilled workers. We show that foreign direct investment increases the real wages of skilled and unskilled workers, but widens the gap between the two under plausible conditions. JEL: F10, F11, F21