Exchange Rate Volatility and Export-Oriented FDI

Abstract

No clear consensus exists in the existing literature on the effects of exchange rate volatility on Foreign Direct Investment (FDI). A survey of past studies on this topic yields negative, positive, and indeterminate effects. Furthermore, the impact of currency risk appears to vary across both time and location. One possible explanation for these conflicting results is that they ignore the importance of export oriented FDI. A multinational's foreign affiliate is likely to operate in both the host country and local export markets. This tendency is magnified when considering FDI within a customs union such as the EU. Ignoring local export markets creates an omitted variable bias, which could overestimate or underestimate the effects of exchange rate volatility on FDI. Using detailed data on the operations of foreign affiliates of US multinationals across seventeen European countries from 1983 - 2002, we approach this issue in two stages. In the first stage, we obtain a measure of exports from foreign affiliates that is filtered from bilateral exchange rate volatility between the host and local export markets. This export series is then included in a dynamic panel with US to host market exchange rate volatility and a host of other FDI determinants to explain inflows of FDI from the US to European countries. Potential endogeneity issues are addressed using a GMM procedure suggested by Arellano and Bond (1991). We find that the ability to export has a positive and significant effect on inflows of FDI, estimating that a 1% increase in exports as a share of total affiliate sales is associated with a $96 million increase in FDI inflows. Once foreign affiliate exports have been accounted for, we find that exchange rate volatility between the US and the host country has a significantly negative effect on the level of FDI, but an insignificant effect on inflows. Additionally, it appears that there are some unobserved features of membership in the European Monetary Union that have a significantly positive effect on inflows. Finally, we run a counterfactual experiment in which we assume that the UK had adopted the euro in 1999. Re-estimating the trade and FDI relations, we estimate that by not joining the EMU, the UK has lost approximately $12 billion worth of FDI from the US. While not a large loss (less that 0.1% of UK GDP), it does imply that with regard to FDI from the US, the formation of the EMU has benefited the euro-zone countries at the expense of those outside the EMU.