Did the 2008 global financial crisis influence the host country corruption and inward foreign direct investments relationship? An empirical examination

We use annual data over the 2002–2016 period with Panel Smooth Transition Regression model to examine how the 2008 global financial crisis affected the relationship between FDI inflows into developed, developing, and transition host countries and host country corruption levels. We also partitioned the data for each type of host into corruption regimes (low, moderate, and high) and examined the results separately for each regime. Our results indicate that the crisis altered the FDI inflows/corruption relationships and generally depend on the development level of the host country and corruption regimes. In addition, our evidence suggests a strong correlation between selected host country macroeconomic variables like financial depth, gross capital formation, and FDI outflows and sample variables. In turn, the crisis also affects these variables. Factor analysis results using all sample variables and separately for donor/aid recipient countries indicate the emergence of a few key factors (host country economic environment, host country international involvement, and host country economic growth potential) that are also affected by the crisis. Our analysis strongly suggests that the FDI/corruption is a complex one and corruption prone host countries must consider improvements to corruption, financial depth and domestic gross capital simultaneously to attract FDI inflows.