Does technology shape the relationship between FDI and growth? A panel data analysis

The theoretical literature on the FDI-growth relationship suggests that FDI with high technological content might play a peculiar role. To investigate the existence and magnitude of this peculiar effect, we collected data for 28 countries over the period 1989 to 2019 and used GMM techniques for empirical estimation. We employed the U.N. International Standard Classification (ISIC) Revision 3 to classify FDI data and follow the criteria laid down by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) to distinguish FDI data by technological content. The empirical findings of this article confirm that technology plays an important role in determining the FDI-Growth relationship. Interestingly, the empirical evidence supports a U-shaped relationship between FDI and economic growth when FDI is disaggregated by different technological contents. More specifically, we find strong evidence that in the manufacturing sector, FDI with a higher technological content exhibits a positive association with growth in the host country. We also find evidence pointing towards a positive relationship between FDI and growth in the host country at the other end of the technology spectrum (low-tech). Further investigation confirms the robustness of these findings across different estimation techniques as well as across different sampling strategies.