Nonlinear impacts of debt ratio and term spread on inward FDI performance persistence

Abstract

This paper adopts panel smooth transition autoregression models with the proxies of monetary and fiscal policies (i.e., term spread and debt ratio) as the transition variables to estimate inward foreign direct investment (FDI) performance and its persistence. The models can trace the characteristics of inflow FDI performance in nonlinearity, heterogeneity, and persistence. Empirical results show that the inward FDI performance and its persistence for the ten OECD countries during 1996–2010 are nonlinear and vary with time and across countries, depending on the proxies in different regimes. The threshold values for the term spread and debt ratio are 2.51 and 64.9847%, respectively. Moderately enhancing the term spread and the debt ratio is helpful to exclude specific exogenous disturbance on FDI inflows and stabilize the persistence of FDI inflow performance. However, debt issuance causes a transitorily volatile effect on the persistence (i.e., a negative persistence effect) more easily than monetary policy.