IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/rif/report/27.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

How Does Foreign Direct Investment Measure Real Investment by Foreign-owned Companies? Firm-level Analysis

Author

Listed:
  • Leino, Topias
  • Ali-Yrkkö, Jyrki

Abstract

We study how Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) measures gross fixed capital formation in foreign-owned companies. Our data include firm-level information on FDI inflows and real investment (Gross Fixed Capital Formation) by foreign-owned companies located in Finland. Our results suggest that the recorded annual inflows of FDI poorly measure annual real investments in foreign-owned companies. Since the beginning of the global recession in 2008, FDI has significantly underestimated real investments by foreign companies in Finland. We seek to explain these findings by describing Finnish FDI target enterprises and subgroups and the nature of their FDI flows from several perspectives. We show how FDI target enterprises use other sources of funding in addition to FDI, and how a few large transactions, often related to cross-border mergers and acquisitions, can explain a great deal of the recorded annual FDI flows. We also describe how Finland’s FDI figures increasingly consist of funds that merely pass through the FDI enterprises and subgroups, arguably with little or no real economic linkage to the Finnish economy, and present a calculation method for estimating such pass-through funding.

Suggested Citation

  • Leino, Topias & Ali-Yrkkö, Jyrki, 2014. "How Does Foreign Direct Investment Measure Real Investment by Foreign-owned Companies? Firm-level Analysis," ETLA Reports 27, The Research Institute of the Finnish Economy.
    • Handle: RePEc:rif:report:27
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.etla.fi/wp-content/uploads/ETLA-Raportit-Reports-27.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Manuel Agosin & Roberto Machado, 2005. "Foreign Investment in Developing Countries: Does it Crowd in Domestic Investment?," Oxford Development Studies, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 33(2), pages 149-162.
    2. Iršová, Zuzana & Havránek, Tomáš, 2013. "Determinants of Horizontal Spillovers from FDI: Evidence from a Large Meta-Analysis," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 42(C), pages 1-15.
    3. Lingyun Huang & Xiaming Liu & Lei Xu, 2012. "Regional Innovation and Spillover Effects of Foreign Direct Investment in China: A Threshold Approach," Regional Studies, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 46(5), pages 583-596, August.
    4. Xu Gang & Wang Ruifang, 2007. "The Effect of Foreign Direct Investment on Domestic Capital Formation, Trade, and Economic Growth in a Transition Economy: Evidence from China," Global Economy Journal, De Gruyter, vol. 7(2), pages 1-23, June.
    5. Robert E. Lipsey, 2000. "Interpreting Developed Countries' Foreign Direct Investment," NBER Working Papers 7810, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    6. Van Loo, Frances, 1977. "The Effect of Foreign Direct Investment on Investment in Canada," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 59(4), pages 474-481, November.
    7. Havranek, Tomas & Irsova, Zuzana, 2011. "Estimating vertical spillovers from FDI: Why results vary and what the true effect is," Journal of International Economics, Elsevier, vol. 85(2), pages 234-244.
    8. Titarenko, Deniss, 2005. "The Influence of Foreign Direct Investment on Domestic Investment Processes in Latvia," MPRA Paper 18192, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    9. Ramirez, Miguel D., 2007. "Is Foreign Direct Investment Productive in the Latin America Case? A Panel Unit Root and Panel Cointegration Analysis, 1980-2001," Working Papers 23, Yale University, Department of Economics.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

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


    Cited by:

    1. Crowley, Patrick & Hughes Hallett, Andrew, 2014. "Volatility transfers between cycles: A theory of why the "great moderation" was more mirage than moderation," Bank of Finland Research Discussion Papers 23/2014, Bank of Finland.
    2. Bruno Casella, . "Looking through conduit FDI in search of ultimate investors – a probabilistic approach," UNCTAD Transnational Corporations Journal, United Nations Conference on Trade and Development.
    3. Casella, Bruno, 2019. "Looking through conduit FDI in search of ultimate investors – a probabilistic approach," MPRA Paper 95188, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    4. Sébastien Miroudot & Davide Rigo, 2022. "Multinational production and investment provisions in preferential trade agreements [Intra-industry foreign direct investment]," Journal of Economic Geography, Oxford University Press, vol. 22(6), pages 1275-1308.
    5. repec:zbw:bofrdp:2014_023 is not listed on IDEAS
    6. Dmitry Erokhin, 2023. "Tax effects on foreign direct investment—Just a rerouting," The World Economy, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 46(9), pages 2808-2834, September.
    7. Casella, Bruno, 2019. "FDI Statistics and International Production: Towards (Re-) Conciliation?," MPRA Paper 95203, University Library of Munich, Germany, revised 14 May 2019.
    8. Kox, Henk L.M., 2024. "Towards time-consistent bilateral FDI statistics: A new dataset covering 2001-2022," MPRA Paper 122883, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    9. Maria Borga & Cecilia Caliandro, 2020. "Eliminating the Pass-Through: Towards FDI Statistics That Better Capture the Financial and Economic Linkages between Countries," NBER Chapters, in: Challenges of Globalization in the Measurement of National Accounts, pages 103-151, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    10. Crowley, Patrick & Hughes Hallett, Andrew, 2014. "Volatility transfers between cycles: A theory of why the "great moderation" was more mirage than moderation," Research Discussion Papers 23/2014, Bank of Finland.
    11. Richard Bolwijn & Bruno Casella & Davide Rigo, . "An FDI-driven approach to measuring the scale and economic impact of BEPS," UNCTAD Transnational Corporations Journal, United Nations Conference on Trade and Development.
    12. Maria Borga & Cecilia Caliandro, 2018. "Eliminating the Pass-Through: Towards FDI Statistics that Better Capture the Financial and Economic Linkages between Countries," NBER Working Papers 25029, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Leino, Topias & Ali-Yrkkö, Jyrki, 2014. "How well does foreign direct investment measure real investment by foreign-owned companies? : Firm-level analysis," Research Discussion Papers 12/2014, Bank of Finland.
    2. repec:zbw:bofrdp:2014_012 is not listed on IDEAS
    3. Leino, Topias & Ali-Yrkkö, Jyrki, 2014. "How well does foreign direct investment measure real investment by foreign-owned companies? Firm-level analysis," Bank of Finland Research Discussion Papers 12/2014, Bank of Finland.
    4. Alessia A. Amighini & Margaret S. McMillan & Marco Sanfilippo, 2017. "FDI and Capital Formation in Developing Economies: New Evidence from Industry-level Data," NBER Working Papers 23049, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    5. Farla, Kristine & de Crombrugghe, Denis & Verspagen, Bart, 2016. "Institutions, Foreign Direct Investment, and Domestic Investment: Crowding Out or Crowding In?," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 88(C), pages 1-9.
    6. Theodore Kahn & Zack Zimbalist, 2022. "Public investment versus government consumption: how FDI shocks shape the composition of subnational spending in Mexico," Review of International Political Economy, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 29(2), pages 502-537, March.
    7. Rajneesh Narula & André Pineli, 2017. "Multinational Enterprises and Economic Development in Host Countries: What We Know and What We Don’t Know," Palgrave Studies in Impact Finance, in: Gianluigi Giorgioni (ed.), Development Finance, chapter 6, pages 147-188, Palgrave Macmillan.
    8. Chen, George S. & Yao, Yao & Malizard, Julien, 2017. "Does foreign direct investment crowd in or crowd out private domestic investment in China? The effect of entry mode," Economic Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 61(C), pages 409-419.
    9. Rajneesh Narula & André Pineli, 2019. "Improving the developmental impact of multinational enterprises: policy and research challenges," Economia e Politica Industriale: Journal of Industrial and Business Economics, Springer;Associazione Amici di Economia e Politica Industriale, vol. 46(1), pages 1-24, March.
    10. Gunby, Philip & Jin, Yinghua & Robert Reed, W., 2017. "Did FDI Really Cause Chinese Economic Growth? A Meta-Analysis," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 90(C), pages 242-255.
    11. Yao Yao & Ruhul Salim, 2020. "Crowds in or crowds out? The effect of foreign direct investment on domestic investment in Chinese cities," Empirical Economics, Springer, vol. 58(5), pages 2129-2154, May.
    12. Stefan Pahl & Marcel P. Timmer, 2020. "Do Global Value Chains Enhance Economic Upgrading? A Long View," Journal of Development Studies, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 56(9), pages 1683-1705, July.
    13. repec:wly:econjl:v::y:2017:i:605:p:f236-f265 is not listed on IDEAS
    14. Alquist, Ron & Berman, Nicolas & Mukherjee, Rahul & Tesar, Linda L., 2019. "Financial constraints, institutions, and foreign ownership," Journal of International Economics, Elsevier, vol. 118(C), pages 63-83.
    15. Demena, B.A., 2021. "Effectiveness of export promotion programmes," ISS Working Papers - General Series 688, International Institute of Social Studies of Erasmus University Rotterdam (ISS), The Hague.
    16. Cristina Jude, 2019. "Does FDI crowd out domestic investment in transition countries?," The Economics of Transition, The European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, vol. 27(1), pages 163-200, January.
    17. Davies, RB & Lamla, MJ & Schiffbauer, M, 2016. "Learning or Leaning: Persistent and Transitory Spillovers from FDI," Essex Finance Centre Working Papers 15772, University of Essex, Essex Business School.
    18. Irena Jindrichovska & Erginbay Ugurlu & Eleftherios I. Thalassinos, 2020. "Exploring the Trend of Czech FDIs and their Effect to Institutional Environment," International Journal of Economics & Business Administration (IJEBA), International Journal of Economics & Business Administration (IJEBA), vol. 0(1), pages 94-108.
    19. Charlie Joyez, 2017. "Firm heterogeneity and the integration trilemma: The utility of Joint ventures in integration versus outsourcing models," Working Papers DT/2017/09, DIAL (Développement, Institutions et Mondialisation).
    20. Pavla NIKOLOVOVÁ, 2013. "Sourcing Patterns of FDI Activity and Their Impact on the Domestic Economy," Czech Journal of Economics and Finance (Finance a uver), Charles University Prague, Faculty of Social Sciences, vol. 63(3), pages 288-302, July.
    21. Karolien Lenaerts & Bruno Merlevede, 2015. "Firm size and spillover effects from foreign direct investment: the case of Romania," Small Business Economics, Springer, vol. 45(3), pages 595-611, October.
    22. Filip Novotny, 2015. "Profitability Life Cycle of Foreign Direct Investment and its Application to the Czech Republic," Working Papers 2015/11, Czech National Bank.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Foreign direct investment; Fixed investment; GFCF; Measure; Measurement; Passthrough; Inward; Firm-level;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • F21 - International Economics - - International Factor Movements and International Business - - - International Investment; Long-Term Capital Movements
    • F23 - International Economics - - International Factor Movements and International Business - - - Multinational Firms; International Business
    • E22 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Consumption, Saving, Production, Employment, and Investment - - - Investment; Capital; Intangible Capital; Capacity

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    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:rif:report:27. 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.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with 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: Kaija Hyvönen-Rajecki (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/etlaafi.html .

    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.