Foreign Direct Investment

What happens when capital and sophisticated goods flow uphill, from poorer to richer countries? With a new dataset of foreign direct investment and a measure of the sophistication of exports, CGD senior fellow Arvind Subramanian and his co-author Aaditya Mattoo find that developing countries sending goods and services uphill experience economic growth and other development benefits.

International corporations interested in joining the fight against global poverty can choose from a wide range of options, according to a new CGD report released last week. The report, Joining the Fight Against Global Poverty: A Menu for Corporate Engagement, suggests six approaches for corporations to consider. Based on interviews with senior executives at 15 firms with global reach, it includes stories about what has worked (and what hasn't) and describes some of the advantages that companies have found in working for development.

Sierra Leone, where a brutal decade-long civil war finally ended in 2002, has just held remarkably fair, peaceful and well-organized elections. CGD visiting fellow Carol Lancaster, a former deputy administrator of USAID, was there as an election observer. In a new CGD Essay, she reflects on what democracy means in a country with a mere 35 percent literacy rate, a 70 percent unemployment rate, and life expectancy of only 40 years. She writes that progress will depend upon the new government's ability to tackle corruption, rebuild infrastructure and encourage investment. It will also require the emergence of a domestic constituency with the knowledge, power and commitment to hold new leaders accountable. Learn More

Does foreign direct investment (FDI) channel capital and know-how to developing countries? Or does it bring corruption and abuse of labor standards? Harnessing Foreign Direct Investment shows that FDI's contribution to development can be extremely powerful but that some forms of FDI, especially infrastructure, have serious adverse consequences. CGD non-resident fellow Theodore H. Moran shows for the first time how some investors circumvent the U.S. and host country laws and international treaties outlawing corrupt payments without risking prosecution, and offers recommendations on what to do about it.

In this new CGD working paper John Nellis takes stock of fifteen years of privatization in developing and post-communist countries. He finds that a surprisingly large amount of assets remain in state hands. And while technical assessments of the impact of privatization are often positive, public opinion tends to be highly critical. The paper ends with suggestions for creating incentives for privatization that better serve public needs.Learn More

The Commitment to Development Index (CDI), which ranks 21 countries across six policy areas, is widely seen as the most comprehensive and substantive measure of rich country policies towards development. In response to requests from other would-be index builders, CDI architect David Roodman describes the work of the interdisciplinary team that builds and runs the Index. Among the lessons: to work well, policy indexes must combine humility with a clear sense of purpose. Learn more

African state-owned enterprises, particularly those in infrastructure, have a long history of poor performance. But moves in the 1990s to rely instead on private-sector participation and ownership have yet to deliver the hoped-for improvements. Is the solution to return to a strategy of improving state firms under public management? In this new CGD working paper, John Nellis argues that that Africa's SOEs are no more promising now than before and that private firms still have not been given a real chance.Learn More

The G-8 has endorsed sweeping efforts to combat bribery and corrupt payments by international investors. Are these efforts effective? A new working paper by Theodore H. Moran says no. In How Multinational Investors Evade Developed Country Laws, Moran presents evidence that multinational corporations evade anti-corruption laws by making payments to relatives and cronies of developing country rulers. The findings will be discussed at a CGD event on Thursday, Feb. 16.

In this CGD Brief, Todd Moss and Vijaya Ramachandran analyze the survey results of 300-400 manufacturing firms in Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda. Their main finding? Foreign firms perform better than local firms in generating jobs, increasing the productivty of their workers, and in skills transfer.

Time to put to rest the stale debate over whether the World Bank should disburse grants or loans to the world’s poorest countries. It is critical that the Bank provide more of its funding as grants, but in a more rational manner than has been the case to date. A third Bank window should distribute grants – and grants only – to very poor countries, for example, with incomes below $500 per capita. Shifting to grants-only for the very poorest countries would ensure they never again find themselves with unpayable debt burdens, and would allow them to re-invest resources into their own economies rather than repay the Bank.