Foreign direct investment has been of great importance in economic growth and global economic integration over the last decades. South East Asia has been part of this development with rapidly increasing inflows of FDI. However, there are large variations over time and between countries in the region as regard to the policies towards FDI, and in actual inflows of FDI. This chapter aims at examin...

1. Introduction As one of the basic drives of globalization, Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) is playing an active role in the economic development of NIEs. For instance, in China 2004, fixed assets investment, industry value added, and export of FDI firms accounts for 12%, 28%, and 57% of nation's total amount. 24 million employees are hired by FDI firms which accounts for 10% of all non-agricu...

This paper analyzes the cross-country distribution and volume of Foreign Direct Investment (FDI), its barriers, and its impact on welfare. From the observed patterns of FDI, three facts stand out: a very small fraction of countries engages in FDI; geography remains a significant impediment to FDI; countries’ size is important in determining the existence and volume of bilateral FDI. I present a...

Studies have found the impact of foreign direct investments (FDI) on productivity growth to be firm-industry-host economy specific. However, the impact of FDI may differ with the existing market conditions in the economy and also with respect to the source of the FDI. The paper examines the impact of FDI on productivity growth of the Indian industry in the period of low market demand conditions...

The paper develops a model of foreign direct investments (FDI) and foreign portfolio investments (FPI). FDI enables the owner to obtain refined information about the firm. This superiority, relative to FPI, comes with a cost: a firm owned by the FDI investor has a low resale price because of asymmetric information between the owner and potential buyers. The model can explain several stylized fa...

Recent work (including that of the author) on the impact of FDI has been based on micro-level (i.e. firms, establishments or plants) data, since this allows much greater control when examining such issues as whether FDI plants are more productive or innovative; whether there are spillovers to indigenous plants from FDI; and whether foreign-owned plants can facilitate the building-up of clusters...

In the early 1990s, hoping to reduce chronic electricity shortages and enhance the efficiency of Chinese power plants, China opened its doors to foreign direct investment (FDI) in electricity generation. Using data from an original survey of US private investors, official Chinese statistics, and other sources, we assess the volume and characteristics of FDI in China's power sector, its impact o...

This paper analyses the role of exchange rates in the competition for FDI. Based on the assumption that two countries compete for FDI from the same source country, the paper shows explicitly that the relative FDI of one country is determined by the relative real exchange rate between its currency and that of the source country. The theoretical result suggests that, if the currency of one FDI re...

In this paper we distinguish different “qualities” of FDI to re-examine the relationship between FDI and growth. We use ‘quality’ to mean the effect of a unit of FDI on economic growth. However, this is difficult to establish because it is a function of many different country and project characteristics which are often hard to measure. Hence, we differentiate “quality FDI” in several different ...