Abstract

The paper estimates the impact of institutions’ quality on the attraction of foreign direct investment (FDI) to developing countries. Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) was used to develop a new measure of quality of institutions: Institutional Efficiency Index (IEI). In order to appraise quantitatively the effect of institutional quality on FDI entry, we used a panel data regression analysis on a dataset covering 40 countries from different developing regions for which the necessary data were accessible during the period 2011-2015. The paper argues that the institutional efficiency, as a measure of institutional quality, enhances the attractiveness of developing countries to FDI.

The results of this paper suggest that FDI is mainly determined by institutional quality. A host country endowed with a high quality of institutions will be more attractive to foreign investors. In order to improve their competitiveness in term of attraction of foreign investment, developing countries should work more on providing a stable environment as well as on the transparency of policy implementation regarding the entry of multinational companies. 

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.