Outward Foreign Direct Investment from Malaysia: An Exploratory Study

Tham Siew Yean

Journal of Current Southeast Asian Affairs, 2007, vol. 26, issue 5, 44-72

Abstract: Although Malaysia is well known as a host economy, there is little research on its investment abroad even though this has been steadily increasing over time. Using a case study approach based on Dunning’s OLI framework, seven firms are studied in order to understand their motivations to invest abroad as well as home and host country policies that have facilitated or hindered their investments. The main motivations for these firms to invest abroad are quite varied, ranging from the low labor cost advantage in the host country, saturation of the domestic Malaysian market, as well as the need to enhance their export-competitiveness in third-country markets and to exploit the domestic market potential in other countries. The main home country policy that has benefited the companies in their overseas investment is the full tax exemption on income earned overseas. Host country policies such as tax incentives, while attractive, are not considered to be critical in their investment decisions. Equity constraints are also not considered as obstacles.

Date: 2007
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

There are no downloads for this item, see the EconPapers FAQ for hints about obtaining it.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gig:soaktu:v:15:y:2007:i:5:p:44-72

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.giga-hamburg.de/suedostasien-aktuell

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in Journal of Current Southeast Asian Affairs from Institute of Asian Studies, GIGA German Institute of Global and Area Studies, Hamburg Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Marco Bünte ( this e-mail address is bad, please contact ) and Howard Loewen ( this e-mail address is bad, please contact ).