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The Declining barriers to Foreign Direct Investments and how to see them

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Abstract

Although Foreign Direct Investments (FDI) are as important to the world economy as exports, the extensive literature on trade costs has no strong parallel for FDI. Data are hard to come by, and many of the barriers to FDI are unobservable. This paper circumvents the problem by inferring the barriers to FDI that are consistent with observed FDI data. I describe the distribution and evolution of these barriers to FDI between pairs of 28 OECD countries from 1985 to 2008. On average, barriers to FDI were halved every 4.8 years. Geography is a key determinant, but GDP per capita also plays a leading role. Decomposing the growth in FDI, I show that it has mainly been driven by lower bilateral barriers (75%), not by economic growth, and that bilateral FDI stocks will tend to crowd each other out, lowering their yearly growth by -3%

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  • Christian Gormsen, 2012. "The Declining barriers to Foreign Direct Investments and how to see them," Documents de travail du Centre d'Economie de la Sorbonne 12015, Université Panthéon-Sorbonne (Paris 1), Centre d'Economie de la Sorbonne.
    • Handle: RePEc:mse:cesdoc:12015
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    Cited by:

    1. Shawn Arita & Kiyoyasu Tanaka, 2014. "Heterogeneous multinational firms and productivity gains from falling FDI barriers," Review of World Economics (Weltwirtschaftliches Archiv), Springer;Institut für Weltwirtschaft (Kiel Institute for the World Economy), vol. 150(1), pages 83-113, February.
    2. Sébastien Miroudot & Ben Shepherd, 2014. "The Paradox of ‘Preferences’: Regional Trade Agreements and Trade Costs in Services," The World Economy, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 37(12), pages 1751-1772, December.
    3. Arita, Shawn & Tanaka, Kiyoyasu, 2013. "FDI and investment barriers in developing economies," IDE Discussion Papers 431, Institute of Developing Economies, Japan External Trade Organization(JETRO).
    4. Kiyoyasu Tanaka & Shawn Arita, 2016. "Does policy reform promote FDI in developing economies? a firm-level simulation approach," Journal of Economic Policy Reform, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 19(3), pages 281-304, July.

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    More about this item

    Keywords

    Foreign direct investment; economic integration; gravity;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • F15 - International Economics - - Trade - - - Economic Integration
    • 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

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