Is Foreign Aid a Vanguard of FDI? A Gravity-Equation Approach

Hidemi Kimura and Yasuyuki Todo

Discussion papers from Research Institute of Economy, Trade and Industry (RIETI)

Abstract: This paper investigates whether and how foreign aid facilitates foreign direct investment (FDI) flows into less developed countries. We employ a large data set of source-recipient country pairs and conduct gravity equation-type estimation. Our empirical methodology enables us to distinguish among three effects of aid on FDI: a positive "infrastructure effect," a negative "rent-seeking effect," and a positive "vanguard effect," which is specific to the same source-recipient country pair of aid and FDI. According to our empirical analysis, foreign aid in general does not necessarily have an infrastructure, rent-seeking, or vanguard effect. However, we find robust evidence that foreign aid from Japan has a vanguard effect, while aid from other donor countries reveals no such effect. This vanguard effect seems to be peculiar to the Japanese foreign aid.

Pages: 35 pages
Date: 2007-03
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-dev
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (10)

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eti:dpaper:07007

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