《《How Does Foreign Direct Investment Affect Economic Growth》.pdfVIP

Journal of International Economics 45 (1998) 115–135 How does foreign direct investment affect economic growth? 1 a , * b c E. Borensztein , J. De Gregorio , J-W. Lee aInternational Monetary Fund, Research Department, Washington DC 20431 USA b Center for Applied Economics, Department of Industrial Engineering, Universidad de Chile, Santiago, Chile cEconomics Department, Korea University and NBER, Seoul 136-701 Korea Received 21 February 1996; received in revised form 24 February 1997; accepted 20 May 1997 Abstract We test the effect of foreign direct investment (FDI) on economic growth in a cross-country regression framework, utilizing data on FDI flows from industrial countries to 69 developing countries over the last two decades. Our results suggest that FDI is an important vehicle for the transfer of technology, contributing relatively more to growth than domestic investment. However, the higher productivity of FDI holds only when the host country has a minimum threshold stock of human capital. Thus, FDI contributes to economic growth only when a sufficient absorptive capability of the advanced technologies is available in the host economy.  1998 Elsevier Science B.V. Keywords : Foreign direct investment; Economic growth; Cross-country regression frame- work; Developing countries * Corresponding author: Tel.: 1 202 6237679; Fax: 1 202 6234740; e-mail: eborensztein@imf.org 1We are grateful for comments from Robert Barro, Elha