Outward Foreign Direct Investment from Emerging Economies and National Development Strategies: Three Regimes

Foreign direct investment (FDI) is an integral part of national development strategy throughout the developing world. However, while traditionally strategies have focused on the role of inward flows only, today, outward FDI is used on a larger scale and more deliberately to access markets and resources abroad. This Introduction proposes a broad framework for the analysis of OFDI from emerging economies. It provides a picture of how the role of FDI in development has changed over time and outlines the theoretical and institutional context in which the current wave of OFDI takes place. Theories of development and FDI, the role of government, and the trade policy environment have interacted to form three distinct development paradigms with different roles for FDI. For convenience, we will refer to these as the import substituting, the export-oriented and the FDI-led development regimes. Where local companies previously engaged mostly by way of trade-based measures, FDI is now becoming more integrated into corporate competitive strategies and national development policies.