IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eme/ijdipp/ijdi-01-2020-0014.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Human capital threshold, foreign direct investment and economic growth: evidence from sub-Saharan Africa

Author

Listed:
  • Friday Osemenshan Anetor

Abstract

Purpose - The purpose of this study is to analyze the mediating effect of human capital in foreign direct investment (FDI) and growth nexus and establish the threshold of human capital in 28 sub-Saharan African (SSA) countries over the period 1999–2017. Design/methodology/approach - This study used a secondary source of data obtained from the World Development Indicator and used the system generalized method of moments and dynamic panel threshold regression (TR) to analyze the data. Findings - This study found that FDI and human capital have no significant impact on the economic growth in SSA. However, when the interactive term of FDI and human capital was introduced in the model, the economic growth effect of FDI became positive and significant, while the coefficient of the interactive term is negative and significant. This presupposes that SSA does not have a sufficient high-quality workforce that can absorb and transform the spillover benefits of FDI into economic growth. As a result, this study applied the TR to determine the minimum level of human capital and established a threshold level at 63.91%. Practical implications - It, therefore, becomes pertinent for policymakers in the SSA region to have a human capital policy to build up their absorptive capacities to fully take advantage of FDI. Originality/value - The contribution of this study lies in establishing a threshold of human capital at 63.91% for countries in the SSA region.

Suggested Citation

  • Friday Osemenshan Anetor, 2020. "Human capital threshold, foreign direct investment and economic growth: evidence from sub-Saharan Africa," International Journal of Development Issues, Emerald Group Publishing Limited, vol. 19(3), pages 323-337, June.
    • Handle: RePEc:eme:ijdipp:ijdi-01-2020-0014
    DOI: 10.1108/IJDI-01-2020-0014
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.emerald.com/insight/content/doi/10.1108/IJDI-01-2020-0014/full/html?utm_source=repec&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=repec
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers
    File URL: https://www.emerald.com/insight/content/doi/10.1108/IJDI-01-2020-0014/full/pdf?utm_source=repec&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=repec
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1108/IJDI-01-2020-0014?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Asafo-Agyei, George & Kodongo, Odongo, 2022. "Foreign direct investment and economic growth in Sub-Saharan Africa: A nonlinear analysis," Economic Systems, Elsevier, vol. 46(4).
    2. Friday Osemenshan Anetor & Olusegun Vincent, . "Do human capital and institutional environment constrain the impact of foreign direct investment inflows on economic growth in Africa?," UNCTAD Transnational Corporations Journal, United Nations Conference on Trade and Development.
    3. Imen Mohamed Sghaier, 2022. "Foreign Capital Inflows and Economic Growth in North African Countries: the Role of Human Capital," Journal of the Knowledge Economy, Springer;Portland International Center for Management of Engineering and Technology (PICMET), vol. 13(4), pages 2804-2821, December.
    4. Imen Mohamed Sghaier, 2021. "Foreign Financial Flows, Human Capital and Economic Growth in North African Countries," Economic Alternatives, University of National and World Economy, Sofia, Bulgaria, issue 3, pages 355-371, September.
    5. Kazeem Abimbola Sanusi & Forget Mingiri Kapingura, 2022. "Drivers of capital inflow: Does global uncertainty matter?," Cogent Business & Management, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 9(1), pages 2124596-212, December.
    6. Thanh Dinh Su & Canh Phuc Nguyen, 2022. "Foreign financial flows, human capital and economic growth in African developing countries," International Journal of Finance & Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 27(3), pages 3010-3031, July.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Economic growth; Foreign direct investment; System GMM; SSA; Human capital threshold; F21; J24; O40; O55;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • F21 - International Economics - - International Factor Movements and International Business - - - International Investment; Long-Term Capital Movements
    • J24 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demand and Supply of Labor - - - Human Capital; Skills; Occupational Choice; Labor Productivity
    • O40 - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth - - Economic Growth and Aggregate Productivity - - - General
    • O55 - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth - - Economywide Country Studies - - - Africa

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eme:ijdipp:ijdi-01-2020-0014. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Emerald Support (email available below). General contact details of provider: .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.