IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/wdevel/v40y2012i11p2221-2233.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Do Developing Countries Invest Up? The Environmental Effects of Foreign Direct Investment from Less-Developed Countries

Author

Listed:
  • Zeng, Ka
  • Eastin, Joshua

Abstract

This paper examines the environmental effects of foreign direct investment (FDI) from less-developed countries (LDC). We hypothesize that rather than transferring poor home-country practices across borders, LDC FDI can increase the level of environmental stewardship of host-country firms. We contend that LDC firms find it increasing financially advantageous to signal to consumers, investors, and potential business partners their commitment to environmental protection by adopting sound environmental practices. Furthermore, this behavior can create spillover effects to other host-country firms, leading these firms to also boost their environmental credentials. Our empirical findings lend support to these conjectures.

Suggested Citation

  • Zeng, Ka & Eastin, Joshua, 2012. "Do Developing Countries Invest Up? The Environmental Effects of Foreign Direct Investment from Less-Developed Countries," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 40(11), pages 2221-2233.
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:wdevel:v:40:y:2012:i:11:p:2221-2233
    DOI: 10.1016/j.worlddev.2012.03.008
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0305750X12000459
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1016/j.worlddev.2012.03.008?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Aseem Prakash & Matthew Potoski, 2006. "Racing to the Bottom? Trade, Environmental Governance, and ISO 14001," American Journal of Political Science, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 50(2), pages 350-364, April.
    2. Magnus Blomström & Ari Kokko & Mario Zejan, 2000. "Multinational Corporations and Spillovers," Palgrave Macmillan Books, in: Foreign Direct Investment, chapter 8, pages 101-133, Palgrave Macmillan.
    3. Gene M. Grossman & Alan B. Krueger, 1995. "Economic Growth and the Environment," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 110(2), pages 353-377.
    4. Anton, W.R.Q.Wilma Rose Q. & Deltas, George & Khanna, Madhu, 2004. "Incentives for environmental self-regulation and implications for environmental performance," Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, Elsevier, vol. 48(1), pages 632-654, July.
    5. Brian R. Copeland & M. Scott Taylor, 2004. "Trade, Growth, and the Environment," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 42(1), pages 7-71, March.
    6. Ruihua Joy Jiang & Pratima Bansal, 2003. "Seeing the Need for ISO 14001," Journal of Management Studies, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 40(4), pages 1047-1067, June.
    7. Yuquing Xing & Charles Kolstad, 2002. "Do Lax Environmental Regulations Attract Foreign Investment?," Environmental & Resource Economics, Springer;European Association of Environmental and Resource Economists, vol. 21(1), pages 1-22, January.
    8. Matthew Potoski & Aseem Prakash, 2005. "Covenants with weak swords: ISO 14001 and facilities' environmental performance," Journal of Policy Analysis and Management, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 24(4), pages 745-769.
    9. Silvio Contessi & Hoda S. El-Ghazaly, 2010. "Multinationals from emerging economies: growing but little understood," The Regional Economist, Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, issue Jul, pages 16-17.
    10. Xun Cao & Aseem Prakash, 2011. "Growing exports by signaling product quality: Trade competition and the cross‐national diffusion of ISO 9000 quality standards," Journal of Policy Analysis and Management, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 30(1), pages 111-135, December.
    11. Sanjaya Lall (QEH), "undated". "FDI, AGOA And Manufactured Exports From A Land-Locked, Least-Developed African Economy: Lesotho," QEH Working Papers qehwps109, Queen Elizabeth House, University of Oxford.
    12. Dani Rodrik, 1998. "Has Globalization Gone Too Far?," Challenge, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 41(2), pages 81-94, March.
    13. Branstetter, Lee, 2006. "Is foreign direct investment a channel of knowledge spillovers? Evidence from Japan's FDI in the United States," Journal of International Economics, Elsevier, vol. 68(2), pages 325-344, March.
    14. Pauly, Louis W. & Reich, Simon, 1997. "National structures and multinational corporate behavior: enduring differences in the age of globalization," International Organization, Cambridge University Press, vol. 51(1), pages 1-30, January.
    15. Alan M. Rugman & Alain Verbeke, 2005. "Corporate Strategy and International Environmental Policy," Chapters, in: Analysis of Multinational Strategic Management, chapter 17, pages 286-300, Edward Elgar Publishing.
    16. Eskeland, Gunnar S. & Harrison, Ann E., 2003. "Moving to greener pastures? Multinationals and the pollution haven hypothesis," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 70(1), pages 1-23, February.
    17. Petra Christmann & Glen Taylor, 2001. "Globalization and the Environment: Determinants of Firm Self-Regulation in China," Journal of International Business Studies, Palgrave Macmillan;Academy of International Business, vol. 32(3), pages 439-458, September.
    18. Blomstrom, Magnus & Kokko, Ari, 1998. "Multinational Corporations and Spillovers," Journal of Economic Surveys, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 12(3), pages 247-277, July.
    19. Dilek Aykut & Andrea Goldstein, 2006. "Developing Country Multinationals: South-South Investment Comes of Age," OECD Development Centre Working Papers 257, OECD Publishing.
    20. Dasgupta, Susmita & Hua Wang & Wheeler, David, 1997. "Surviving success : policy reform and the future of industrial pollution in China," Policy Research Working Paper Series 1856, The World Bank.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Li, Qian & Xue, Qiuzhi & Truong, Yann & Xiong, Jie, 2018. "MNCs' industrial linkages and environmental spillovers in emerging economies: The case of China," International Journal of Production Economics, Elsevier, vol. 196(C), pages 346-355.
    2. Mattia Ubaldo & Steven McGuire & Vikrant Shirodkar, 2022. "Voluntary programs and emissions revisited: What is the effect of EU trade agreements with environmental provisions?," Journal of International Business Policy, Palgrave Macmillan, vol. 5(4), pages 467-489, December.
    3. Dan Huang & Shihu Zhong & Juan Tang & Jingjing Zhao, 2021. "Impact of foreign direct investment on the haze pollution in various cities: Evidence from China," Growth and Change, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 52(4), pages 2016-2039, December.
    4. Maoliang Bu & Marcus Wagner, 2016. "Racing to the bottom and racing to the top: The crucial role of firm characteristics in foreign direct investment choices," Journal of International Business Studies, Palgrave Macmillan;Academy of International Business, vol. 47(9), pages 1032-1057, December.
    5. Lorena D’Agostino, 2015. "How MNEs respond to environmental regulation: integrating the Porter hypothesis and the pollution haven hypothesis," Economia Politica: Journal of Analytical and Institutional Economics, Springer;Fondazione Edison, vol. 32(2), pages 245-269, August.
    6. Yunyi Hu & Haitao Yin & Jon J. Moon, 2022. "Environmental regulation and foreign investment: Evidence from China," Journal of Economics & Management Strategy, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 31(4), pages 862-883, November.
    7. Singhania, Monica & Saini, Neha, 2021. "Demystifying pollution haven hypothesis: Role of FDI," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 123(C), pages 516-528.
    8. Grether, Jean-Marie & Mathys, Nicole A., 2013. "The pollution terms of trade and its five components," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 100(1), pages 19-31.
    9. Fabrice Darrigues & Jean-Marc Montaud, 2011. "Trade liberalization, environmental regulation and self-regulation of multinational firms," Working Papers hal-01880351, HAL.
    10. Boka Stéphane Kévin Assa, 2018. "Foreign direct investment, bad governance and forest resources degradation: evidence in Sub-Saharan Africa," Economia Politica: Journal of Analytical and Institutional Economics, Springer;Fondazione Edison, vol. 35(1), pages 107-125, April.
    11. Tamazian, Artur & Chousa, Juan Piñeiro & Vadlamannati, Krishna Chaitanya, 2009. "Does higher economic and financial development lead to environmental degradation: Evidence from BRIC countries," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 37(1), pages 246-253, January.
    12. Fabrice DARRIGUES & Jean-Marc MONTAUD, 2010. "Trade liberalization, environmental regulation and self-regulation of multinational firms," Working Papers 2010-2011_5, CATT - UPPA - Université de Pau et des Pays de l'Adour, revised Nov 2010.
    13. Ayse M. Erdogan, 2014. "Foreign Direct Investment And Environmental Regulations: A Survey," Journal of Economic Surveys, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 28(5), pages 943-955, December.
    14. Nuruzzaman, N. & Singh, Deeksha & Pattnaik, Chinmay, 2019. "Competing to be innovative: Foreign competition and imitative innovation of emerging economy firms," International Business Review, Elsevier, vol. 28(5), pages 1-1.
    15. Bu, Maoliang & Li, Shuang & Jiang, Lei, 2019. "Foreign direct investment and energy intensity in China: Firm-level evidence," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 80(C), pages 366-376.
    16. McGuire, William, 2014. "The effect of ISO 14001 on environmental regulatory compliance in China," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 105(C), pages 254-264.
    17. Kim, Incheol & Pantzalis, Christos & Zhang, Zhengyi, 2021. "Multinationality and the value of green innovation," Journal of Corporate Finance, Elsevier, vol. 69(C).
    18. Sonja Peterson, 2008. "Greenhouse gas mitigation in developing countries through technology transfer?: a survey of empirical evidence," Mitigation and Adaptation Strategies for Global Change, Springer, vol. 13(3), pages 283-305, March.
    19. Bin Ni, 2015. "Productivity, Capital Intensity and ISO14001 Adoption \Theory and Evidence from Vietnam," Discussion Papers in Economics and Business 15-26, Osaka University, Graduate School of Economics.
    20. Antoine Dechezleprêtre & Misato Sato, 2017. "The Impacts of Environmental Regulations on Competitiveness," Review of Environmental Economics and Policy, Association of Environmental and Resource Economists, vol. 11(2), pages 183-206.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    FDI; environment; ISO 14001; LDC;
    All these keywords.

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eee:wdevel:v:40:y:2012:i:11:p:2221-2233. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.elsevier.com/locate/worlddev .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.