Theories of FDI: Diversity and Implications for Empirical Testing

Imad A. Moosa ()
Additional contact information
Imad A. Moosa: School of Economics, Finance and Marketing, RMIT

Transnational Corporations Review, 2015, vol. 7, issue 3, 297-315

Abstract: This paper argues that a large number of studies have been conducted to identify the determinants of foreign direct investment (FDI) inflows but no consensus view has emerged. This is particular in the sense that there is no widely accepted set of explanatory variables that can be regarded as the ¡§true¡¨ determinants of FDI. The results of these studies are highly sensitive to differences in perspectives, methodologies, sample-selection and analytical tools. While many potential determining variables may be found to be statistically significant in cross-sectional studies, the estimated relations typically depend on the set of variables included in the regression equation. What may appear to be a significant determinant of FDI may be fragile, not robust. One suggestion to this problem is the use of extreme bounds analysis.

Keywords: FDI; methodology; bounds analysis; development; empirical testing (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2015
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
http://tnc-online.net/journal/html/?553.html (text/html)

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:oul:tncr09:v:7:y:2015:i:3:p:297-315

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in Transnational Corporations Review from Ottawa United Learning Academy 1568 Merivale Rd. Suite # 618, Ottawa, Ontario, Canada K2G 5Y7.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Denny Liao ( this e-mail address is bad, please contact ) and Jen Ma ().