Measuring the Impacts of FDI in Central and Eastern Europe

The impacts of inward FDI on host countries are frequently studied using balance-of-payments based measures of flows and stocks. These are unreliable for the purpose because, while theories of the effects of investment are based on FDI production and employment in the host country, these measures are often distorted approximations of the location of real activity. The mismeasurement is particularly important if trade openness, often associated with FDI, is treated as a control variable. The countries of Central and Eastern Europe, a very minor object of US direct investment, have, since 1990, become a major location for FDI from Europe, especially from Germany. The investments from both the US and Germany are, on average, very labor-intensive, and are heavily concentrated in Motor Vehicles. One result has been a shift in the export comparative advantage of these countries toward the machinery and transport equipment sector. Microdata studies in the CEE countries have found that foreign participation is associated with higher productivity in the affiliates themselves. Spillovers to indigenous firms are more spotty, clearer to upstream suppliers than to firms in the same industries as the affiliates.

Foreign Production by U.S. Firms and Parent Firm Employment

Despite the persistent fears that production abroad by U.S. multinationals reduces employment at home, there has, in fact, been almost no aggregate shift of production or employment to foreign countries. Some continuing shifts to foreign locations by U.S. manufacturing firms have been largely offset by shifts into the United States by foreign manufacturing multinationals. An analysis of individual firm data indicates that higher levels of production in developing countries by a firm are associated with lower employment at home for a given level of production. The reason is that U.S. multinationals tend to allocate their more labor-intensive production to developing country affiliates and retain more capital-intensive and skill-intensive operations in the United States.

Interpreting Developed Countries' Foreign Direct Investment

Inward and outward direct investment (FDI) stocks and flows tend to go together, across countries and over time. The countries that invest extensively abroad are usually also large recipients of FDI. There is little evidence that flows of FDI are a major influence on capital formation. That lack of effects suggests that financing capital formation is not a primary role of FDI. FDI transfers the ownership of existing productive assets from one set of owners to others willing to pay more for them, possibly from less efficient to more efficient owners. One fact that suggests this function is that outward U.S. FDI production and outward minus inward production tends to be concentrated in industries of U. S. comparative advantage. It is not in industries of U.S. comparative disadvantage, as might be expected if FDI were primarily a method of relocating production to more suitable locations. Within individual broad industry groups, U.S. FDI tends to move to countries with comparative disadvantages in trade relative to the United States in machinery industries. In resource-intensive industries, however, it moves to countries with comparative advantages in trade relative to the United States. The difference suggests that company comparative advantages dominate investment in machinery, but country comparative advantages dominate in resource-intensive industries. If FDI is transferring assets and production from less efficient to more efficient owners and managers, inward FDI can be viewed in the recipient countries as freeing capital that had been frozen in industries that the owners would prefer to leave. It permits the former owners to allocate their capital in more desirable and profitable ways. Outward FDI permits a home country's firms to optimally exploit their skills and comparative advantages, perhaps lost to the home countries, but retained by the country's firms.