Heterogeneous immigrants and foreign direct investment: The role of language skills

Matthias Lücke () and Tobias Stöhr
Authors registered in the RePEc Author Service: Tobias Heidland

No 2009, Kiel Working Papers from Kiel Institute for the World Economy (IfW Kiel)

Abstract: We investigate the interplay of language skills and immigrant stocks in determining bilateral FDI out-stocks of OECD reporting countries. Applying a Poisson panel estimator to 2004-2011 data, we find a robust positive effect of bilateral immigrants on bilateral FDI - provided that residents of the two countries have few language skills in common. We find a similar effect for immigrants from third countries that speak the language(s) of the FDI host country, making them potential substitutes for bilateral migrants. Our findings suggest that immigrants facilitate outgoing FDI through their language skills, rather than through other characteristics like cultural familiarity.

Keywords: migration; FDI; foreign languages; globalization (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: F21 F22 O14 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2015
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-int and nep-mig
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.econstor.eu/bitstream/10419/121499/1/836450590.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Working Paper: Heterogeneous Immigrants and Foreign Direct Investment: The Role of Language Skills (2015)
Working Paper: Heterogeneous Immigrants and Foreign Direct Investment: The Role of Language Skills (2015)
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:zbw:ifwkwp:2009

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Kiel Working Papers from Kiel Institute for the World Economy (IfW Kiel) Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics ().