Three Essays on Developing Countries and Foreign Direct Investment

Three Essays on Developing Countries and Foreign Direct Investment
Author: Youngchae Lee
Publisher:
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2018
Genre: Developing countries
ISBN:

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"My dissertation is motivated by the question, "In an era of ever-increasing global economic integration, why do some developing countries continually struggle to attract foreign direct investment (FDI)?" I explain this phenomenon by highlighting the interaction between international law and domestic institutions, and illustrating how this dynamic affects FDI in developing countries. My methods involve large-N quantitative analyses of developing countries, supported by case studies. The first chapter, "The Effects of Federalism and decentralization on the Business Environment for Foreign Direct Investment," shows that while developing countries often sign bilateral investment treaties (BITs) to commit to a stable policy environment, the effectiveness of these treaties in improving policy stability is reduced by federalism and decentralization. According to international law, national governments are legally responsible for any BIT violations that occur within their territories, even when the violation was committed by a subnational-level government. One implication of this is that when foreign investors initiate international arbitration claims over alleged BIT violations, the respondents are always national governments. This gives subnational governments weaker incentives than national governments to comply with BITs, which decreases the effectiveness of BITs in promoting policy stability in countries where subnational governments are relatively powerful. The second chapter, "Can Rational Choice Explain Bilateral Investment Treaties? How Lack of Legal Capacity Affects BIT Signing," argues that a country's legal capacity affects its ability to fully evaluate the consequences of BITs. I show that countries with federal and decentralized governments are more likely to be embroiled in international investment disputes over alleged violations of BITs, but that only countries with higher legal capacity are likely to adjust for this increased risk by signing fewer BITs. This demonstrates that a country's ability to behave in a "rational" manner when signing international treaties is dependent on its level of legal expertise. The third chapter, "The Effects of Judicial Independence on Foreign Direct Investment and International Arbitration Laws," studies how developing countries with institutional disadvantages use international alternatives to promote FDI, and how this differs by regime type. I show that in democratic countries, a decrease in judicial independence is associated with lower FDI inflows. Countries facing this problem respond by being more likely to adopt laws that provide investors with the option of international arbitration. These patterns are, however, not observed in autocratic countries. This is because in autocratic countries, the government can provide foreign investors with opportunities to collude with the government and extract rents at the expense of the public, making them less dependent on judicial independence to attract FDI"--Pages vii-ix.

Three Essays on the Relationship Between Policy Uncertainty and Foreign Direct Investment

Three Essays on the Relationship Between Policy Uncertainty and Foreign Direct Investment
Author: Chikezie Kenneth Okoli
Publisher:
Total Pages: 163
Release: 2021
Genre: International economic relations
ISBN:

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Foreign direct investment (FDI) occurs when an entity in one country establishes a significant degree of ownership in an enterprise in another country. FDI is a critical component in ensuring the development of any economy. It often aids with the development of an industry or sector within an economy by bringing in capital, new technologies, manufacturing methodologies, and managing expertise to the receiving country. This dissertation examines the relationship between policy uncertainty and foreign direct investment (FDI) in developed economies. The first essay focuses on U.S. policy uncertainty and its effects on U.S. FDI inflows, while the second essay focuses on the cross-border effect of U.S. policy uncertainty on its neighbours FDI inflows. The third essay focuses on how policy uncertainty affects the investment entry mode choices of multinational enterprises. In the first essay, I add to the discussion surrounding Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) and its relationship with policy uncertainty by employing novel measures of policy uncertainty in the United States. Drawing some conclusions from the Real Options investment theory, I examine the relationship between policy uncertainty and FDI inflows using different measures of policy uncertainty. Overall, I find that an increase in the Partisan Conflict (PC) index increases the flow of FDI into the United States. This finding appears at odds with what has previously been found in the literature regarding political uncertainty and FDI. Using other measures of policy uncertainty such as the Economic Policy Uncertainty index (EPU) and the categorical EPU (CPU) index the estimated results show policy uncertainty as measured by the EPU index, decreases FDI into manufacturing sectors and decreases FDI into non-manufacturing sectors. This effect varies depending on the sample period being examined. However, when policy uncertainty is measured by the CPU index, policy uncertainty has no impact on FDI inflows to the United States regardless of the type of industry or capital intensity. The second essay examines how U.S. policy uncertainty spillovers affect its neighbours within the context of FDI inflows. Adopting a common framework employed in the literature, I utilize a Vector Autoregressive (VAR) model to examine the contemporaneous relationships between the endogenous and exogenous variables. The two spillover transmission methods examined in this paper are Direct Transmission and Indirect Transmission. The empirical analysis conducted showed that the significance of U.S. policy uncertainty spillovers varied by country and the method of transmission. Canadian FDI inflows from the United States and from the rest of the world were shown to be more susceptible to the negative effects of U.S. policy uncertainty spillovers via the direct channel. But the results remained mixed when considering the indirect channel. For Mexico, the results showed that only U.S. FDI inflows to Mexico were susceptible to the negative effects of U.S. policy uncertainty via the indirect channel. Furthermore, when policy uncertainty spillovers were defined between Partisan Conflict (PC) index and the Economic Policy Uncertainty (EPU) index, the results showed that only EPU spillovers were significant in affecting FDI across Canada and Mexico. The third essay examines the mode of entry that Japanese multinational enterprises (MNEs) adopt in the presence of host market policy uncertainty. Employing a two-stage framework, I examine how Japanese MNEs establish foreign affiliates in 25 countries. In the first stage, the firms decide whether to adopt a direct or an indirect mode of entry in the presence of host market policy uncertainty. A direct entry mode is when the MNE has an ownership share in the affiliate that is greater than 10% while an indirect entry mode is when the MNE has no ownership shares in the affiliate but sets the operational and business goals of the affiliate. The results show that Japanese MNEs preferred an indirect mode of entry when faced with medium levels of policy uncertainty. In the second stage the estimated results show that relatively high levels of policy uncertainty caused Japanese MNEs to prefer minority Joint Ventures over establishing Wholly Owned Subsidiaries. Since 58% of observed investments occur in two countries (China, the United States) it is possible that the results of the analysis are being driven by the concentration of investments in both countries. Therefore, I re-examine the model to focus exclusively on investment activities in China and the United States. These results show that the previously described results were due to the investment activity in these two countries.

Three Essays on Direct Foreign Investment and Technology Transfer

Three Essays on Direct Foreign Investment and Technology Transfer
Author: Yongjae Choi
Publisher:
Total Pages: 114
Release: 1994
Genre:
ISBN:

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Direct foreign investment (DFI) by transnational enterprises (TNEs) is an important vehicle of capital and technology transfer among countries. Yet, the possibility of heavy taxation and expropriation by the governments of host countries seems to be a serious impediment to the more extensive use of DFI as a means of improving resource allocation and technology transfer among countries. The first essay develops a game-theoretic model of direct foreign investment (DFI) in a country where the government cannot commit to refraining from expropriation of sunk investments by transnational enterprises (TNEs). In this situation, when the government lacks the necessary resources to finance the sunk costs of investment, DFI would be possible if there are self-enforcing contracts that give the investing TNE a minimum amount of the surplus generated by the project. We argue such contracts may exist if there are possibilities for transfer pricing on the part of the TNE. While transfer pricing is often seen as a negative aspect of TNE investments, our findings suggest that some transfer pricing opportunities may indeed enhance DFI. This also implies that in a country with severe government time-inconsistency problems, investment in detection of transfer pricing may be counter-productive for the extension of DFI benefits to the country. The second essay argues that the role of the TNE as a guarantor of product quality can serve to secure DFI and transfer of technology. In a market subject to producers' moral hazard arising from unobservable product quality, guaranteeing quality by individual producers may require high reputational rents when the cost of delivering high-quality products fluctuates. TNEs operating in a large number of countries may have less incentives to cheat because cheating in one country costs the TNEs the loss of reputation in other countries. Thus, they produce high quality at a lower quality premium in each country. This incentive effect of "risk pooling" provides the TNEs an advantage over independent local firms in terms of guaranteeing product quality and this advantage may make foreign investment attractive to host countries and deter opportunistic policies. It also helps TNEs transfer their technologies through arm's length agreements with greater confidence. The third essay consists of an emprical study of Korean electrical/electronics industry focusing on the effects of imported foreign technologies on local technological progress. It is shown that that the technologies developed by the local firms in Korean electrical/electronics industry are mainly peripheral or adaptive to imported foreign technologies. When learning-how is not essential and technolgical progress is quite rapid, continued import of foreign technologies is crucial for keeping pace with international technological progress. Contrary to the conventional view of the role of exports in Korean economic development, the role of exports is limited to facilitating enhancing technological capabilities for production and generation of new technologies requires conscious investments on R & D and imports of foreign technologies.