The Voice of Foreign Direct Investment : Foreign Investor Policy Preferences and Experiences in Developing Countries

Saurav, Abhishek ; Kuo, Ryan

World Bank, Washington, DC

关键词: FOREIGN DIRECT INVESTMENT;    MULTINATIONAL CORPORATION;    BUSINESS SURVEY;    INVESTMENT CLIMATE;    INTERNATIONAL BUSINESS;   

DOI  :  10.1596/1813-9450-9425
RP-ID  :  WPS9425

学科分类：社会科学、人文和艺术（综合）

来源: World Bank Open Knowledge Repository

【 摘 要 】

This paper provides insights to informgovernment efforts to attract and retain foreign directinvestment, by analyzing the results of a survey of morethan 2,400 affiliates of multinational enterprises across 10middle-income countries. The paper explores corporateperspectives and decision-making on countries’ legal andregulatory environments, political risk, and investmentpromotion activities. The survey finds that abusiness-friendly policy environment is critical tomultinational enterprises’ investment decisions, confirmingthe importance of removing regulatory barriers to foreigndirect investment (particularly approval processes),lowering political risks, and having investment promotionagencies. The survey results also show that investors areheterogeneous, with affiliates’ sectors, trading behaviors,sizes, ages, source countries, and foreign ownership levelsaffecting their perceptions of and sensitivity to variouspolicy factors. Thus, policy makers should tailor theirpolicy efforts to the needs of priority investor segments.Notably, the analysis consistently finds variation based onthe extent to which affiliates import their inputs,suggesting that this relatively understudied topic deservesincreased research and policy attention.