Many empirical studies in the area of foreign direct investment (FDI) exclusively focus on flows between industrialized countries. This article makes a contribution to the still relatively sparse literature on FDI in emerging markets by estimating determinants of German FDI flows to Latin America and Asia during the past decade. Using data contained in a newly available Bundesbank microdatabase, an FDI flow variable, constructed from year-to-year differences in FDI stocks adjusted for certain ot more...

The authors analyze the patterns of East Asia's trade and foreign direct investment (FDI) from a global and intraregional perspective, taking into account the importance of trade and FDI interlinkages. They propose two regionally-focused approaches to promoting trade and FDI in East Asia-regional agreements and regional production networks. The East Asia crisis strengthened appeals for regional cooperation in the financial area. As a result, a number of financial arrangements and initiatives hav more...

The authors show that the potential benefit to a host country of forward markets or of foreign exchange guarantees depend on the investor's country of origin and on specific characteristics of investment. They show this in terms of the effects on foreign-exchange risks and on the amount of foreign direct investment taking place. Their main lessons for foreign investors: (a) the benefits of hedging exchange risks through forward markets vary substantially, depending on the investor, the type of i more...

Discriminatory regional trade arrangements do not reflect the needs and circumstances of the East Asian economy at the beginning of the twenty-first century, and specifically the need to accommodate the growth and opening of the Chinese economy within the regional and global economic systems. The proliferation of FTA arrangements, with increasingly complicated rules of origin, is more likely to distort and derail rather than to encourage broader and deeper economic integration. The objectives of more...

In this paper, we set out to measure and examine vertical intra-industry trade patterns in the East Asian region and compare these with the results of previous studies focusing on the EU, to which such analyses so far have been confined. Based on the supposition that VIIT is closely related to offshore production by multinational enterprises, we then develop a model to capture the main determinants of VIIT that explicitly includes the role of FDI.

China's dramatic success in attracting foreign direct investment (FDI) has raised concerns that it has success diverted FDI from other countries in Asia. We develop a new methodology to estimate crowding out, and we use it to investigate the impact of China's emergence on FDI flows to Asia using data from 14 Asian economies from 1984 to 2002. The results suggest that China did not have much impact on FDI to other countries. In particular, lowincome economies, which compete with China for low-wag more...

This series of World Bank Briefing Papers looks at how to define globalization and then assesses three leading questions about globalization by looking at the evidence from a large number of countries. These papers concentrate on the international trade dimension of globalization; subsequent Briefing Papers will look at other dimensions and questions about globalization.

This year´s World Investment Report focuses on the rise of foreign direct investment (FDI) by transnational corporations (TNCs) from developing and transition economies.

New sources of FDI are emerging among developing and transition economies. This phenomenon has been particularly marked in the past ten years, and a growing number of TNCs from these economies are emerging as major regional - or sometimes even global - players. The new links these TNCs are forging with the rest of the world more...

FDI from developing countries is now a major factor in the world economy, according to the latest issue of UNCTAD's World Investment Report 2006.

This series of World Bank Briefing Papers looks at how to define globalization and then assesses three leading questions about globalization by looking at the evidence from a large number of countries. These papers concentrate on the international trade dimension of globalization; subsequent Briefing Papers will look at other dimensions and questions about globalization.