IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/erg/wpaper/0238.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

The Determinants of Foreign Direct Investment in The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia

Author

Listed:
  • A-M. M. Abdel-Rahman

Abstract

This paper investigates the nature of FDI flows into the economy of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA), its impacts and the various determinants, which govern its levels and performances. The paper discusses FDI in the KSA with respect to overall trends including stages, sources and their regional, sectoral and sub-sectoral distributions. Positive trends are observable in both contracted and actual FDI stocks with common jumps occurring in the early eighties because of the infusion of massive FDI into the petrochemicals sub-sector of the Kingdom. FDI in the KSA is seen to be predominantly of the Joint venture form while Greenfield investments are expected to accelerate after the imposition of a New Investment Law permitting these types of investments. Sectorally, the Manufacturing sector attracts the largest share of FDI flowing into the Kingdom. This is attributable to the fact that most of FDI tended to flow to the heavy Petrochemical industry comprising the majority's share of total foreign investments in the Kingdom?s Manufacturing sector. The paper then discusses the determinants of both contracted and actual FDI. The roles of market size, economic integration via international trade, wage rates, and country risk in attracting FDI to the KSA were investigated. Empirical methods used to gauge the issues include causality tests on FDI and other variables of the KSA economy plus conventional regression models on the determinants of FDI themselves. Results obtained on the empirical trials show that activity GDP levels affect FDI in its contracted and actual forms positively, significantly and in a robust fashion. Exports proved a significant negative determinant of the KSA's FDI. This was attributed to the fact FDI and exports - which are largely Oil in nature may be viewed as substitutes from the host country perspective. Domestic investments proved to be negative determinants on the contracted FDI with the indication of a possible 'crowding-out' effect in that regard. The socio-political risk variable were mostly significant, thus validating the conjecture that with lower risk, FDI tended to increase for the Kingdom.

Suggested Citation

  • A-M. M. Abdel-Rahman, 2002. "The Determinants of Foreign Direct Investment in The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia," Working Papers 0238, Economic Research Forum, revised 12 Dec 2002.
    • Handle: RePEc:erg:wpaper:0238
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://erf.org.eg/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/0238.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: http://bit.ly/2r8Sysk
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Luiz R. de Mello Jr., 1997. "Foreign Direct Investment in Developing Countries: A Selective Survey," Studies in Economics 9701, School of Economics, University of Kent.
    2. Brian J. Aitken & Ann E. Harrison, 2022. "Do Domestic Firms Benefit from Direct Foreign Investment? Evidence from Venezuela," World Scientific Book Chapters, in: Globalization, Firms, and Workers, chapter 6, pages 139-152, World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd..
    3. Borensztein, E. & De Gregorio, J. & Lee, J-W., 1998. "How does foreign direct investment affect economic growth?1," Journal of International Economics, Elsevier, vol. 45(1), pages 115-135, June.
    4. David W Loree & Stephen E Guisinger, 1995. "Policy and Non-Policy Determinants of U.S. Equity Foreign Direct Investment," Journal of International Business Studies, Palgrave Macmillan;Academy of International Business, vol. 26(2), pages 281-299, June.
    5. Horst, Thomas, 1972. "The Industrial Composition of U. S. Exports and Subsidiary Sales to the Canadian Market," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 62(1), pages 37-45, March.
    6. William H Davidson, 1980. "The Location of Foreign Direct Investment Activity: Country Characteristics and Experience Effects," Journal of International Business Studies, Palgrave Macmillan;Academy of International Business, vol. 11(2), pages 9-22, June.
    7. Imad A. Moosa, 2002. "Foreign Direct Investment," Palgrave Macmillan Books, Palgrave Macmillan, number 978-1-4039-0749-3, December.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

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


    Cited by:

    1. Pongsiri, Nutavoot, 2005. "Foreign Direct Investment and Regulation: A Case Study of Thailand's Upstream Oil and Gas Industry," Centre on Regulation and Competition (CRC) Working papers 30602, University of Manchester, Institute for Development Policy and Management (IDPM).

    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. Ozturk, Ilhan & Kalyoncu, Huseyin, 2007. "Foreign Direct Investment and Growth: An Empirical Investigation based on Cross-Country Comparison," Economia Internazionale / International Economics, Camera di Commercio Industria Artigianato Agricoltura di Genova, vol. 60(1), pages 75-81.
    2. Dierk Herzer & Stephan Klasen & Felicitas Nowak-Lehmann D., 2006. "In search of FDI-led growth in developing countries," Ibero America Institute for Econ. Research (IAI) Discussion Papers 150, Ibero-America Institute for Economic Research.
    3. Bastian Gawellek & Jingjing Lyu & Bernd Süssmuth, 2016. "Did Chinese Outward Activity Attenuate or Aggravate the Great Recession in Developing Countries?," CESifo Working Paper Series 5735, CESifo.
    4. Argentino Pessoa, 2008. "Multinational Corporations, Foreign Investment, and Royalties and License Fees: Effects on Host-Country Total Factor Productivity," Notas Económicas, Faculty of Economics, University of Coimbra, issue 28, pages 6-31, December.
    5. Silvio Traverso & Guido Bonatti, 2015. "Education and FDI: An Insight from US Outflows," Journal of Social Economics, Research Academy of Social Sciences, vol. 2(3), pages 101-116.
    6. Chu, Amanda M.Y. & Lv, Zhihui & Wagner, Niklas F. & Wong, Wing-Keung, 2020. "Linear and nonlinear growth determinants: The case of Mongolia and its connection to China," Emerging Markets Review, Elsevier, vol. 43(C).
    7. Vinish Kathuria, 2019. "Growth and Investment: Testing for the Relationship for South Asian Countries," Millennial Asia, , vol. 10(3), pages 337-371, December.
    8. Burcu ŞENALP, 2018. "Foreign Direct Investment, Economic Growth and Economic Freedom: A Literature Survey," Istanbul Journal of Economics-Istanbul Iktisat Dergisi, Istanbul University, Faculty of Economics, vol. 68(2), pages 301-336, December.
    9. Makiela, Kamil & Ouattara, Bazoumana, 2018. "Foreign direct investment and economic growth: Exploring the transmission channels," Economic Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 72(C), pages 296-305.
    10. Mehdi Behname, 2012. "Foreign Direct Investment and Economic Growth: Evidence from Southern Asia," Economic Analysis Working Papers (2002-2010). Atlantic Review of Economics (2011-2016), Colexio de Economistas de A Coruña, Spain and Fundación Una Galicia Moderna, vol. 2, pages 1-1, December.
    11. Kottaridi, Constantina & Stengos, Thanasis, 2010. "Foreign direct investment, human capital and non-linearities in economic growth," Journal of Macroeconomics, Elsevier, vol. 32(3), pages 858-871, September.
    12. Busse, Matthias & Groizard, José Luis, 2005. "FDI, Regulations and Growth," Conference papers 331335, Purdue University, Center for Global Trade Analysis, Global Trade Analysis Project.
    13. Muntasir Mamun Iqbal & Abdul Mumit, 2017. "Level or Growth, Which is More Important? Influence of Human Capital on Spillovers from Foreign Direct Investment," International Journal of Economics and Financial Issues, Econjournals, vol. 7(6), pages 154-158.
    14. Christian Hilber & Ioan Voicu, 2010. "Agglomeration Economies and the Location of Foreign Direct Investment: Empirical Evidence from Romania," Regional Studies, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 44(3), pages 355-371.
    15. Tuan, Chyau & Ng, Linda F.Y. & Zhao, Bo, 2009. "China's post-economic reform growth: The role of FDI and productivity progress," Journal of Asian Economics, Elsevier, vol. 20(3), pages 280-293, May.
    16. Herzer, Dierk & Klasen, Stephan & Nowak-Lehmann D., Felicitas, 2008. "In search of FDI-led growth in developing countries: The way forward," Economic Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 25(5), pages 793-810, September.
    17. Hsu, Shih-Hsun & Chang, Ching-Cheng & Yang, Tzu-Chiang & Lin, Hsing-Chun & Su, Han-Pang, 2005. "An Ex post Evaluation of Economic Impacts of SARS on Taiwan Using a Dynamic Computable General Equilibrium Model," Conference papers 331386, Purdue University, Center for Global Trade Analysis, Global Trade Analysis Project.
    18. Ghosh Madanmohan & Wang Weimin, 2010. "Does FDI Accelerate Economic Growth? The OECD Experience Based on Panel Data Estimates for the Period 1980-2004," Global Economy Journal, De Gruyter, vol. 9(4), pages 1-23, January.
    19. Yalta, A. Yasemin, 2013. "Revisiting the FDI-led growth Hypothesis: The case of China," Economic Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 31(C), pages 335-343.
    20. Narula, Rajneesh & Portelli, Brian, 2004. "Foreign direct investment and economic development: Opportunities and limitations from a developing country perspective," Research Memorandum 009, Maastricht University, Maastricht Economic Research Institute on Innovation and Technology (MERIT).

    More about this item

    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:erg:wpaper:0238. 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: Sherine Ghoneim (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/erfaceg.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.