On the Location Attractiveness of Emerging Countries for Foreign Direct Investments

Abstract

Our paper investigates the FDI attracting potential of emerging markets by in terms of their location attributes. We use Statistical cluster analysis to study the dynamic evolution of emerging markets’ clusters, based on country attributes that are relevant for the MNEs location decision. We find that countries tend to be grouped at a geographical level or depending on the various resources they possess, except for China that clusters independently. Also, there are numerous countries’ transitions from one cluster to another over the years, which indicate a natural process of changing location attributes and market development for many emerging economies