Estimation of Supply of Foreign Direct Investment in Iran

Abstract

Investment is one of the most important issues in economic. For economic growth to take place, investment is a major factor especially in developing countries. In the global atmosphere for survival and growth of countries with high technology and production capabilities, investment is a vital requirement. Therefore foreign financial resources as a complementary are necessary for internal resources. Foreign direct investment (FDI) as a financing method is beneficiary in two ways. First, it will cover the lack of investment. Second, it can serve as a technology transfering tool. Based on all these facts it is critical to investigate the factor effecting foreign direct investment and trying to change those in a suitable manner. In this paper, using econometric model and "Auto-Regressive Distributed Lag" method, we estimated the effect of relevant explanatory variables on FDI. The results of the estimation indicates that: First, there is no long-run (equilibrium) relation for supply of foreign direct investment but there exists a short- run relation. Second, there is a positive correlation between foreign direct investment, GDP, exchange rate, human capital and lagged foreign direct investment. Also the relation between foreign direct investment and inflation, tax, and tariff is negative.