The impact of foreign direct investment on agricultural exports: The evidence from developing countries

Abstract

In this paper, we examine how foreign direct investment inflows in agriculture affect the agricultural exports of developing countries. The main objective of our analysis is to identify and quantify the export effects of foreign direct investment in the sector, as well as the effects of other relevant export determinants, and to explore the possible long-run relationship between the variables. Using panel data on 80 developing countries observed in the period 2005-2017, we employ the system-generalised method of moments and the method of quasi-maximum likelihood to estimate a dynamic agricultural exports model. Additionally, we test for the cointegration between exports and foreign direct investment using the Pedroni and Kao approaches. We find that foreign direct investment inflows have a positive impact on agricultural exports in the analysed countries in both the short run and the long run. Thereby, we identified the significance of both direct and spillover export effects. This implies that the liberalisation and promotion of foreign investment in agriculture could alleviate the problems of capital scarcity and constraints in developing countries and increase their agricultural export competitiveness.