Measuring multinational production with foreign direct investment statistics: A survey of challenges and recent developments

Foreign direct investment (FDI) statistics are frequently used to proxy multinational production and activities of multinational enterprises (MNEs). Yet, FDI statistics have been subject to critique because FDI is also driven by financial motives that are barely related to real production activities...

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Bibliographic Details
Published inJournal of economic surveys Vol. 39; no. 4; pp. 1462 - 1487
Main Authors Wacker, Konstantin M., Casella, Bruno, Borga, Maria
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published Oxford Blackwell Publishing Ltd 01.09.2025
Subjects
balance of payments
foreign affiliates
foreign direct investment (FDI)
Foreign investment
Multinational corporations
multinational enterprises
multinational production
Polls & surveys
Online AccessGet full text
ISSN0950-0804
1467-6419
DOI10.1111/joes.12662

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Summary:Foreign direct investment (FDI) statistics are frequently used to proxy multinational production and activities of multinational enterprises (MNEs). Yet, FDI statistics have been subject to critique because FDI is also driven by financial motives that are barely related to real production activities. In this paper, we survey recent advancements in the compilation of international FDI statistics that address those challenges. We discuss how those improved FDI statistics help to tighten the relation between FDI data and multinational production and provide guidance to applied researchers how to implement this in practice.
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ISSN:0950-0804
1467-6419
DOI:10.1111/joes.12662