IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/eab/microe/23246.html

Understanding Foreign Direct Investment in East Asia

Author

Listed:
  • Willem Thorbecke

    (Asian Development Bank Institute (ADBI))

  • Nimesh Salike

Abstract

We recount East Asia’s experience with foreign direct investment (FDI). We document that, contrary to the Rybczynski theorem, capital flows in the region cause the host country’s labor-intensive industry to expand and its capital-intensive industry to decline. We also present narrative evidence that sheds light on how FDI is affected by the host’s country’s locational advantages, whether Asian FDI is footloose, and how the PRC has become the center of Factory Asia. Finally, we show that the evolution of production networks in the region can be explained partly by changes in the service cost of linking geographically separated production blocks relative to the cost saving arising from slicing up the value chain.

Suggested Citation

  • Willem Thorbecke & Nimesh Salike, 2011. "Understanding Foreign Direct Investment in East Asia," Microeconomics Working Papers 23246, East Asian Bureau of Economic Research.
    • Handle: RePEc:eab:microe:23246
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.eaber.org/node/23246
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Kornkarun Cheewatrakoolpong & Chayodom Sabhasri & Nath Bunditwattanawong, 2013. "Impact of the ASEAN Economic Community on ASEAN Production Networks," Trade Working Papers 23393, East Asian Bureau of Economic Research.
    2. Dmitry Alexandrovich Izotov, 2012. "The Foreign Trade of Domestic and External Sectors of the Chinese Economy," Spatial Economics=Prostranstvennaya Ekonomika, Economic Research Institute, Far Eastern Branch, Russian Academy of Sciences (Khabarovsk, Russia), issue 4, pages 49-66.
    3. Dmitriy Izotov, 2013. "Zones with China's concessional regime: spatial concentration and foreign trade contribution," Economy of region, Centre for Economic Security, Institute of Economics of Ural Branch of Russian Academy of Sciences, vol. 1(1), pages 123-132.
    4. Yee-Siong Tong, 2021. "China’S Outbound Investment In Asean Economies In Three Periods: Changing Patterns And Trends," The Singapore Economic Review (SER), World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd., vol. 66(01), pages 105-142, March.
    5. Bruno Martorano & Marco Sanfilippo, 2015. "Structural Change and Wage Inequality in the Manufacturing Sector: Long Run Evidence from East Asia," Oxford Development Studies, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 43(2), pages 212-231, June.
    6. Biswajit Nag & Biswa Nath Bhattacharyay & Debdeep De, 2015. "Integrating India with Asian Production Networks: Prospects and Challenges," CESifo Working Paper Series 5616, CESifo.
    7. Gabor Hunya, 2012. "The Role of Multinational Companies in International Business Integration," wiiw Research Reports 384, The Vienna Institute for International Economic Studies, wiiw.
    8. Corpus, John Paul & Cassimon, Danny, 2025. "Effects of external capital inflows on industrialization in developing countries: evidence from ASEAN-4 economies," IOB Working Papers 2025.05, Universiteit Antwerpen, Institute of Development Policy (IOB).
    9. Huang, Yanghua & Salike, Nimesh & Zhong, Feiteng, 2017. "Policy effect on structural change: A case of Chinese intermediate goods trade," China Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 44(C), pages 30-47.
    10. Miao Wang & Hong Zhuang, 2021. "FDI and educational outcomes in developing countries," Empirical Economics, Springer, vol. 61(6), pages 3505-3539, December.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;

    JEL classification:

    • F21 - International Economics - - International Factor Movements and International Business - - - International Investment; Long-Term Capital Movements
    • F23 - International Economics - - International Factor Movements and International Business - - - Multinational Firms; International Business
    • O53 - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth - - Economywide Country Studies - - - Asia including Middle East

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    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:eab:microe:23246. 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.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using 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: Shiro Armstrong (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/eaberau.html .

    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.