Foreign Direct Investment and the Domestic Capital Stock

16 Pages Posted: 18 Feb 2005 Last revised: 7 Oct 2022

See all articles by Mihir A. Desai

Mihir A. Desai

Harvard Business School - Finance Unit; National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER)

C. Fritz Foley

Harvard University - Business School (HBS); National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER)

James R. Hines Jr.

University of Michigan; NBER

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Date Written: January 2005

Abstract

This paper evaluates evidence of the impact of outbound foreign direct investment (FDI) on domestic investment rates. OECD countries with high rates of outbound FDI in the 1980s and 1990s exhibited lower domestic investment than other countries, which suggests that FDI and domestic investment are substitutes. U.S. time series data tell a very different story, however: years in which American multinational firms have greater foreign capital expenditures coincide with greater domestic capital spending by the same firms. One dollar of additional foreign capital spending is associated with 3.5 dollars of additional domestic capital spending in the time series, implying that foreign and domestic capital are complements in production by multinational firms. This effect is consistent with cross sectional evidence that firms whose foreign operations expand simultaneously expand their domestic operations, and suggests that interpretation of the OECD cross sectional evidence may be confounded by omitted variables.

Suggested Citation

Desai, Mihir A. and Foley, C. Fritz and Hines, James Rodger, Foreign Direct Investment and the Domestic Capital Stock (January 2005). NBER Working Paper No. w11075, Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=652365

Mihir A. Desai (Contact Author)

Harvard Business School - Finance Unit ( email )

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C. Fritz Foley

Harvard University - Business School (HBS) ( email )

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James Rodger Hines

University of Michigan ( email )

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