Determinants of FDI in Developing Countries: Has Globalization Changed the Rules of the Game?.

There is a startling gap between current thinking on, allegedly, globalization-induced changes in international competition for foreign direct investment (FDI) and the lack of recent empirical evidence on shifts in the relative importance of traditional and non-traditional determinants of FDI in developing countries. We attempt to narrow this gap by making use of comprehensive survey data, collected by the European Round Table of Industrialists, on investment conditions in 28 developing countries since the late 1980s. Applying Spearman correlation coefficients and panel-data regression models, we show that surprisingly little has changed so far. Traditional market-related determinants are still dominant factors shaping the distribution of FDI. If at all, the importance of non-traditional FDI determinants has increased only modestly.Direktinvestition; Globalisierung; Entwicklungsländer;

Globalization of the automobile industry : traditional locations under pressure?.

n.a.Kraftfahrzeugindustrie; Globalisierung; Internationaler Wettbewerb; Standortwettbewerb; Beschäftigungseffekt; Deutschland; USA; Japan;

Determinants of Business Cycles in Small Scale Macroeconomic Models: The German Case

We identify measures of shocks to total factor productivity and preferences from two real business cycle models and subject them to Granger causality tests to see whether they can be considered exogenous to other plausible sources of the German business cycle in the mid nineteen seventies and nineteen eighties. We find no evidence to reject the exogeneity of our shock measures. This results contrasts with similar studies for other countries that question the exogeneity of either productivity or preference shocks.Real Business Cycles, Solow Residual, Granger CausalityRe

Creating National Poverty Profiles and Growth Incidence Curves with Incomplete Income or Consumption Expenditure Data: An Application to Bolivia

In many developing countries, there does not exist a time series of nationally representative household budget or income surveys, while there often are surveys of regions as well as nationally representative Demographic and Health Surveys (DHS) which lack information on incomes. This makes an analysis of trends and determinants of poverty and inequality impossible. This is also the situation in Bolivia where there exist urban household surveys and nationally representative DHS since 1989, while nationally representative household income surveys only exist since 1997. In this paper, we adjust a technique developed for poverty mapping exercises to link urban household income surveys with DHS data to generate a time series of household income data from 1989 to 2002. Our technique performs well on validation tests, is superior to imputing incomes from assets in the DHS, and is able to generate new information on poverty and inequality in Bolivia.Microsimulation,survey matching,poverty,inequality,pro-poor growth,poverty profile,growth incidence curve,Bolivia

Post-reform trends in wage inequality: the case of urban Bolivia

This paper seeks to contribute to the ongoing controversy on the distributional effects of structural reforms in developing countries. Applying inequality indices and Fields' (2001) decomposition methodology to Bolivian household survey data of the years 1989 to 1997, we identify recent trends in wage inequality of urban Bolivia. Using a rent-based dual-economy model, we can link these trends to the structural reforms undertaken in Bolivia since 1985

Determinants of FDI in Developing Countries: Has Globalization Changed the Rules of the Game?

There is a startling gap between current thinking on, allegedly, globalization-induced changes in international competition for foreign direct investment (FDI) and the lack of recent empirical evidence on shifts in the relative importance of traditional and non-traditional determinants of FDI in developing countries. We attempt to narrow this gap by making use of comprehensive survey data, collected by the European Round Table of Industrialists, on investment conditions in 28 developing countries since the late 1980s. Applying Spearman correlation coefficients and panel-data regression models, we show that surprisingly little has changed so far. Traditional market-related determinants are still dominant factors shaping the distribution of FDI. If at all, the importance of non-traditional FDI determinants has increased only modestly

Post-reform trends in wage inequality: The case of urban Bolivia

This paper seeks to contribute to the ongoing controversy on the distributional effects of structural reforms in developing countries. Applying inequality indices and Fields’ (2001) decomposition methodology to Bolivian household survey data of the years 1989 to 1997, we identify recent trends in wage inequality of urban Bolivia. Using a rent-based dual-economy model, we can link these trends to the structural reforms undertaken in Bolivia since 1985

Intellectual property rights and foreign direct investment: A disaggregated analysis

This paper aims at overcoming several shortcomings of previous empirical studies on the relationship between IPR protection and FDI. First of all, we use sectorally disaggregated FDI data for a large sampie of host countries. Second, we address the proposition that stronger IPR protection raises not only the quantity but also the quality of FDI. Third, we check to which extent the relationship between IPR protection and FDI is affected by applying alternative measures of IPR protection. Our empirical findings support the hypothesis that the threat of an unauthorized use of intellectual-property-reiated assets and, thus, FDI depends on industry as weIl as host-country characteristics. Furthermore, stronger IPR protection may help induce high-quality FDI

Determinants of Business Cycles in Small Scale Macroeconomic Models: The German Case

We identify measures of shocks to total factor productivity and preferences from two real business cycle models and subject them to Granger causality tests to see whether they can be considered exogenous to other plausible sources of the German business cycle. For the period 60.i to 89.iv no variable Granger causes the shock measures, and for the period 70.i to 01.iv, only M3 does. We attribute the latter result to the breaks in our time series associated with the German reunification in 1990 and the European Monetary Union in 1999. We, thus, find no evidence to reject the exogeneity of our shock measures. Our findings contrast with similar studies for other countries that question the exogeneity of either productivity or preference shocks