Do neighbors of host countries matter to aggregate US FDI outflows?

Abstract

Modeling spatial interaction among contiguous host countries receiving foreign direct investment from the same source country is usually conceived as reflection of market seeking behaviors or cost saving strategies of firms executing location arbitrage. This paper approaches the contiguity in aggregate data from the same source country as an incentive driven process where stocks attract new flows in the neighborhood of the stock location. We examine the influence of geographic neighbors on new flows of FDI from the United States in 3 different clusters in the world. The results show that host country's neighbors matter to new flows of FDI, however, they also indicate that, across clusters, cross countries spillovers are associated with non- manufacturing FDI (investments in services) but not with manufacturing FDI.