The end of cheap labour: Are foreign investors leaving China?

China's government is promoting the shift towards a consumption-based economy since a few years. The explicit goal to significantly raise the percentage of wages in the national household income is integral part of the 12th Five-Year Plan (2011-15). The changes in the economic strategy are likely to affect the attractiveness of the country to foreign investors. In this paper, we raise the hypothesis that soaring wages negatively affect FDI inflows to China and alter the distribution of FDI over Chinese provinces. In addition, low-wage countries in the geographical surrounding might benefit from the changed direction of FDI inflows. By performing panel models with spatial effects for both Chinese provinces and developing ASEAN countries, regional dependencies are explicitly addressed. We provide strong and robust evidence that the wage increases change the distribution of FDI within China. In addition, we show that the changes in China's economic strategy improve the chances of its low-income neighbours to attract FDI

Is aid for infrastructure effective? A difference-in-difference-in-differences approach

The effects of foreign aid on the endowment of recipient countries with infrastructure have received surprisingly little attention in the empirical literature. This paper addresses this question by performing difference-in-difference-in-differences estimations, with the treatment defined as steep increases in aid for infrastructure since a distinct change in donor behavior in 2005. Mitigating endogeneity concerns in this way, we consistently find aid for infrastructure to be ineffective in improving the recipient countries' endowment with infrastructure. This finding holds not only for an encompassing index of economic infrastructure, but also for sub-indices of infrastructure in transportation, communication, energy, and finance

The End of Cheap Labour: Are Foreign Investors Leaving China?

China's government is promoting the shift towards a consumption-based economy since a few years. The explicit goal to significantly raise the percentage of wages in the national household income is integral part of the 12th Five-Year Plan (2011-15). The changes in the economic strategy are likely to affect the attractiveness of the country to foreign investors. In this paper, we raise the hypothesis that soaring wages negatively affect FDI inflows to China and alter the distribution of FDI over Chinese provinces. In addition, low-wage countries in the geographical surrounding might benefit from the changed direction of FDI inflows. By performing panel models with spatial effects for both Chinese provinces and developing ASEAN countries, regional dependencies are explicitly addressed. We provide strong and robust evidence that the wage increases change the distribution of FDI within China. In addition, we show that the changes in China's economic strategy improve the chances of its low-income neighbours to attract FDI

Financial market development in host and source countries and its effects on bilateral FDI

We estimate gravity-type models to assess the effects of financial market development in the host and source countries on bilateral FDI stocks. We address potential reverse causality, inter alia by performing instrumental variable estimations and restricting the sample to observations where reverse causality, if existent, should be less relevant. Our major and robust finding is that bilateral FDI increases with better developed financial markets in both the host and the source country. Furthermore, for developing host countries, we find evidence that financial market development in source and host countries function as substitutes for each other

Aid-financed infrastructure promotes foreign direct investments

The link between aid and private investment is not well understood. Could aid-financed infrastructure investments encourage higher foreign direct investment? The authors present the results of a new composite index of infrastructure to estimate direct and indirect impacts of aid for infrastructure on FDI

A new global index on infrastructure: Construction, rankings and applications

We construct comprehensive and comparable indices on the most relevant components of economic infrastructure. An unobserved components model is employed to cover the largest possible number of developing and developed countries over the period 1990-2010. We map major findings from the new indices on infrastructure and provide country rankings, which we also compare with subjective assessments of infrastructure in the World Economic Forum's Global Competitiveness Report. Finally, we exemplify possible applications related to trade and FDI. By overcoming several data limitations, our new global index can help assess the links between infrastructure and economic development more systematically

Promoting FDI through financial market development in host and source countries

Financial market development of both source and host countries can shape and drive flows of financial direct investment over time

The crucial role of infrastructure in attracting FDI by Julian Donaubauer, Birgit Meyer and Peter Nunnenkamp

Based on a new global index on infrastructure, this Perspective shows that infrastructure is crucially important for developing countries’ attractiveness to FDI inflows. The identification of critical gaps in infrastructure strengthens the bargaining position of policymakers in these countries vis-à-vis foreign donors and multinational enterprise

Infrastructure and trade: A gravity analysis for major trade categories using a new index of infrastructure

Making use of considerably improved measures of infrastructure, we assess the impact of infrastructure on bilateral trade for a panel of 37 developed and emerging economies during the period 1995-2011. We find significant and non-linear effects of overall infrastructure and infrastructure in transportation, communication, energy, and finance on trade in consumption goods, capital goods, and intermediates. Our major findings prove to be robust to various modifications and extensions of the gravity model. Importantly, we still observe significant and non-linear effects of infrastructure on bilateral trade after accounting for potential reverse causality

Aid, Infrastructure, and FDI: Assessing the Transmission Channel with a New Index of Infrastructure

We raise the hypothesis that aid specifically targeted at economic infrastructure helps developing countries attract higher FDI inflows through improving their endowment with infrastructure in transportation, communication, energy and finance. By performing 3SLS estimations we explicitly account for dependencies between three structural equations on the allocation of sector-specific aid, the determinants of infrastructure, and the determinants of FDI. We find fairly strong and robust evidence that targeted aid promotes FDI indirectly through the infrastructure channel. In addition, aid in infrastructure appears to have surprisingly strong direct effects on FDI