This repository contains replication materials for the study of "How Infrastructure and Institutions Shape the Productivity of Foreign Direct Investment:Dynamic Panel Evidence from Emerging and Frontier Economies"
Files include: -Cleaned data for JDE
-Replication .do: Stata commands to reproduce all tables in the paper.
README.pdf: Paper Title: "How Infrastructure and Institutions Shape the Productivity of Foreign Direct Investment:Dynamic Panel Evidence from Emerging and Frontier Economies"
Auther: Ernest Pele Botsyoe(Ghana Institute of Management and Public Administration)
DOI: 10.5281/zenode.18155210
Overview of the study
This study examines the heterogeneous productivity effects of foreign direct investment (FDI) on economic growth in emerging and frontier economies, emphasizing how these effects are conditioned by infrastructure and institutional quality. Drawing on a panel of Sub-Saharan Africa, Latin America, and Asia from 1970 to 2023, we employ dynamic heterogeneous panel estimators (PMG and DFE) to model interactions between FDI and key infrastructure dimensions—electricity access, mobile telecommunications, and logistics performance—while controlling for institutions and regional differences. Our findings reveal that FDI's long-run growth contributions are not automatic but depend critically on complementary infrastructure: electricity access consistently amplifies FDI impacts across regions, logistics performance is particularly salient in Latin America, and mobile telecommunications yield region-specific effects tied to absorptive capacity and FDI sectoral alignment. Baseline FDI effects are often weak or negative, underscoring structural contingencies. By integrating infrastructure-institution complementarities into a dynamic framework, this paper advances beyond additive models, explaining persistent FDI outcome heterogeneity in the Global South. Policy implications highlight the need for coordinated strategies that align FDI attraction with targeted infrastructure upgrades and institutional reforms to unlock foreign capital's growth potential.
Variables, Definitions, and Data Sources
Variable
Description
Data Source
gdpgp
Real GDP per capita growth (annual %)
World Bank, World Development Indicators (WDI)
fdi
Foreign direct investment inflows (% of GDP)
World Bank, WDI
ae
Access to electricity (% of population)
World Bank, WDI
mcs
Mobile cellular subscriptions (per 100 people)
World Bank, WDI
LPI
Logistics Performance Index (overall score, 1–5)
World Bank, LPI Database
gove
Government expenditure (% of GDP)
World Bank, WDI
gfcf
Gross fixed capital formation (% of GDP)
World Bank, WDI
tot
Terms of trade index (2010 = 100)
World Bank, WDI
popg
bm
Population growth (annual %)
Broad money (% of GDP)
World Bank, WDI
World Bank, WDI
Region
Regional classification: Sub-Saharan Africa, Latin America, Asia
Author-coded
Software package: Stata 19 MP
Commands:
a. xthreg
b. xtpmg
The annual secondary data, which was sourced from World Development Indicators, Polity 5 and other sources, have been uploaded to this platform for your use only for replication purposes. Identification is based on the full available country–time sample, rather than subsamples defined by regimes or thresholds, ensuring that the estimated long-run relationships are not driven by sample selection. The estimation outputs, Stata do.files and processed datasets used to generate the results have been uploaded.