Foreign Direct Investment Co-Movement and Home Country Institutions

We use a hand-collected data set of firm-level foreign direct investment in China to examine the impact of home countries' institutional elements on the investment co-movement between foreign and domestic firms. We find that foreign firms from countries with well-developed financial markets or a strong rule of law experience less co-movement with Chinese domestic firms. Our evidence also suggests a contingency impact between the two channels of home country institutions; the capital markets effect exists only for foreign firms from countries with strong rule of law, whereas the rule-of-law effect holds only for firms from countries with well-developed financial markets. Finally, we show that firms from countries with better institutional quality exhibit greater investment efficiency than firms from countries with weaker institutions