The Determinants Of Singapore's Outward Foreign Direct Investment to China and Hong Kong

Abstract

This paper examines the determinants of foreign direct investment (FDI) from Singapore to two main host destinations: China and Hong Kong. It allows policy makers and researchers to understand the differences/similarities in the determinants of FDI from Singapore to a developing country, China, and a developed country, Hong Kong. Annual time series data covers the period 1994 to 2014 is used. Commonly used determinants, such as gross domestic product per capita of a host country, gross domestic product per capita of Singapore, real interest rate of a host country and trade openness of a host country are utilized to study Singapore's outward FDI (OFDI). Because the sample has only 21 observations, autoregressive distributed lag based bounds testing approach to cointegration developed by Pesaran, Shin & Smith (2001) is used to estimate cointegrating regression among these variables. This approach is an appropriate econometric estimation technique because the estimated long-run coefficients obtained from the reparameterization of an ARDL model are super-consistent even in small sample size. The main findings show that gross domestic product per capita of a host country attracts FDI from Singapore to each of these countries. It is also observed that higher interest rates in these two host countries attract Singapore's FDI. The degree of openness of China influences the flows of Singapore's FDI to China positively, but not for Hong Kong. It is a surprise that this empirical study is unable to find evidence that gross domestic product per capita of Singapore has an influence on its own FDI outflows. The overall results reveal that the motives of multinational corporations (MNCs) from Singapore to invest abroad typically differ between developing and developed economies, depending upon their respective competitive advantages. In general, MNCs invest in more advanced economies, such as Hong Kong, due to its purchasing power and market potential. Same goes for the developing markets, such as China, that consists of cheaper labor and large market opportunities. For the developing economies, trade liberalization is proved to be the pull factor that attracts MNCs. The more open an economy, the greater the attraction it has to MNCs.