The complex-network based relation between migration and FDI in the OECD

Abstract

We explore the relationship between human migration and OECD’s Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) using a complex systems’ approach, and we demonstrate how complex systems’ techniques can contribute new insights and advance macroeconomic empirical analysis in alternative ways. More precisely, we find a strong correlation between the migration network and the outward-FDI network, and we highlight the existence of a weaker FDI relationship in pairs of countries that are more central in the migration network. Illuminating this result, we show that inward migrants coming from third-party countries which are linked (a) either to FDI-parent country or to FDI-host country or (b) both to FDI-parent and FDI-host country are FDI marring