Is Foreign Aid a Vanguard of FDI?
A Gravity-Equation Approach

         
Author Name KIMURA Hidemi  (Fellow, RIETI) /TODO Yasuyuki  (Aoyama Gakuin University)
Creation Date/NO. March 2007 07-E-007
Download / Links

Abstract

This paper investigates whether and how foreign aid facilitates foreign direct investment (FDI) flows into less developed countries. We employ a large data set of source-recipient country pairs and conduct gravity equation-type estimation. Our empirical methodology enables us to distinguish among three effects of aid on FDI: a positive "infrastructure effect," a negative "rent-seeking effect," and a positive "vanguard effect," which is specific to the same source-recipient country pair of aid and FDI. According to our empirical analysis, foreign aid in general does not necessarily have an infrastructure, rent-seeking, or vanguard effect. However, we find robust evidence that foreign aid from Japan has a vanguard effect, while aid from other donor countries reveals no such effect. This vanguard effect seems to be peculiar to the Japanese foreign aid.

Published: Hidemi Kimura and Yasuyuki Todo, 2010. "Is Foreign Aid a Vanguard of Foreign Direct Investment? A Gravity-Equation Approach," World Development, Vol. 38(4), pp. 482-497.
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0305750X0900179X