Does foreign direct investment affect national saving both directly and indirectly through the rate of economic growth? It depends on which countries you're talking about. Pacific Basin countries appear to differ markedly from some other developing countries.

We test the effect of foreign direct investment (FDI) on economic growth in a cross-country regression framework, utilizing data on FDI flows from industrial countries to 69 developing countries over the last two decades. Our results suggest that FDI is an important vehicle for the transfer of technology, contributing relatively more to growth than domestic investment. However, the higher productivity of FDI holds only when the host country has a minimum threshold stock of human capital. In addition, FDI has the effect of increasing total investment in the economy more than one for one, which suggests the predominance of complementarity effects with domestic firms.

This book focuses on the relationship between FDI and financial service liberalization in the context of the WTO. By conducting an economic assessment on the extent of GATS liberalization in commercial banking it seeks to empirically clarify if the multilateral liberalization efforts under the WTO promote FDI.

Foreign Direct Investment in Chile addresses all aspects of foreign direct investment in Chile and is very timely since the economy of Chile is growing at a rapid pace. It is considered to be a model in Latin America. In the past few years, foreign investment in Chile has been transformed into a highly significant macroeconomic variable. Indeed, the phenomenon of foreign investment has enticed companies from over sixty countries, representing all the continents. Without a doubt, the impact foreign investment has had on the country's economic development is significant. In December 1994, Chile was formally invited by the United States, Canada and Mexico to join the NAFTA. Negotiations leading to Chile's participation in the NAFTA are expected to begin in the near future. This development will clearly yield many benefits for Chile. First and foremost, this development, acting in concert with the political and economic stability of Chile, will serve as an impetus for more companies, particularly those of American origin, to invest in Chile. This book analyzes the national legal norms of Chile, offering a very useful perspective on the legal regulations of each sector of the economy in general, and on foreign investment in particular.

This workshop proceedings examines foreign direct investment policy and promotion in Latin America.

By analysing foreign direct investment (FDI) in a macroeconomic framework, this study throws new light on various channels through which FDI influences saving, investment, growth, and the balance of payments on current account. The finding that FDI has differential impacts in a sample of five Southeast Asian and eleven other developing countries leads to several policy conclusions. First, FDI is attracted for privatization or debt-equity swap programmes, it may provide additional or alternative balance-of-payments support, but will not accelerate capital formation or economic growth. Second, in the presence of financial and trade distortions, FDI can remove from the host country more that it contributes. In other words, it can be immeserizing. Third, the most efficacious way of encouraging FDI is to implement policies that generally improve the investment climate. Where domestically financed investment is booming, FDI will seek to participate. Finally, maximum benefit from FDI can be achieved in open economies that are free of domestic distortions such as financial repression and trade controls.