Foreign Direct Investment, Regulations, and Growth

This paper explores the linkage between income growth rates and foreign direct investment (FDI) inflows. So far the evidence is rather mixed, as no robust relationship between FDI and income growth has been established. The authors argue that countries need a sound business environment in the form o...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Busse, Matthias, Groizard, José Luis
Format: Policy Research Working Paper
Language:English
Published: World Bank, Washington, DC 2012
Subjects:
FDI
GDP
Online Access:http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/2006/04/6727744/foreign-direct-investment-regulations-growth
http://hdl.handle.net/10986/8728
Description
Summary:This paper explores the linkage between income growth rates and foreign direct investment (FDI) inflows. So far the evidence is rather mixed, as no robust relationship between FDI and income growth has been established. The authors argue that countries need a sound business environment in the form of good government regulations to be able to benefit from FDI. Using a comprehensive data set for regulations, they test this hypothesis and find evidence that excessive regulations restrict growth through FDI only in the most regulated economies. This result holds true for different specifications of the econometric model, including instrumental variable regressions.