Does official aid pave the road for private foreign investment or does it suffocate private initiative by diverting resources towards unproductive activities? In this paper we explore this question using data for a large number of developing and emerging economies. Controlling for countries?...

We explore the effect of foreign direct investment (FDI) on economic growth in developing countries, distinguishing between mergers and acquisitions (M&As) and Greenfield investment. We find that these two types of FDI differ substantially with respect to their influence on growth. While...

Despite the fact that previous studies have extensively investigated the foreign direct investment (FDI)-growth nexus, those studies have not considered the role of terms of trade as a proxy for international competitiveness and structural changes. This paper investigates the causal nexus...

This paper investigates the impact of foreign direct investment on total factor productivity conditional on relative backwardness in a panel of 45 African countries over the period 1980-2012. We use two measures of relative backwardness, namely: the distance from technological frontier and the...

Does official aid pave the road for private foreign investment or does it suffocate private initiative by diverting resources towards unproductive activities? In this paper we explore this question using data for a large number of developing and emerging economies. Controlling for countries'...

We explore the effect of foreign direct investment on economic growth in developing countries, distinguishing between mergers and acquisitions ("M&As") and "greenfield" investment. A simple model captures the key difference between the two types of FDI: unlike greenfield investment, M&As partly...

We estimate gravity-type models to assess the effects of financial market development in the host and source countries on bilateral FDI stocks. We address potential reverse causality, inter alia by performing instrumental variable estimations and restricting the sample to observations where...

In this paper, we empirically re-assess the question which theoretical models and motives are most suitable to explain global patterns of foreign direct investment (FDI). Compared to previous studies, we use bilateral FDI positions with a much more comprehensive coverage of emerging and...

The paper revisits the policy debate on institutional reform approaches to property rights protection and empirically examines it in the context of FDI flows to the Middle East and Northern Africa region (MENA).Using panel data on 11 MENA countries for the period 1991-2007 and adopting feasible...

This paper investigates the importance of factor endowment vis-à-vis institutions in explaining the locational choice of foreign investors during the 1990s.Using dynamic panel estimation on data for transition economies, we find that low labour costs, bureaucratic efficiency ("institutions"),...