Influencing factors of China’s direct investment in RCEP countries: evidence from panel quantile regression

ABSTRACT

This article investigates the influencing factors of China’s outward foreign direct investment (OFDI) in RCEP countries across quantiles. We apply a panel quantile regression to seek the factors that influence China’s OFDI in RCEP countries with the most and least OFDI from China. Our findings are outlined as follows. First, influencing factors of China’s OFDI in RCEP countries have significant heterogeneity across quantiles. More specifically, China’s trade exports (EXP) to RCEP countries have the strongest positive impact on promoting China’s OFDI in RCEP countries, and the strongest positive impact of trade exports on China’s OFDI occurs in RCEP countries with less China’s OFDI. Second, The higher the level of political stability (HP) of RCEP countries with more China’s OFDI, the more China’s OFDI they attract, while in RCEP country with the least China’s OFDI and changes in political stability will not have a significant impact on China’s OFDI. Third, in RCEP countries with less China’s OFDI, a higher level of labour resource endowment (LAB) has a stronger effect on attracting China’s OFDI. Overall, our findings provide policymakers more targeted references for tapping the potential of China’s OFDI in RCEP countries.

KEYWORDS:

• Influencing factors
• Direct investment
• Quantile regression
• Rcep countries; china

JEL CLASSIFICATION:

• E22
• F21

HIGHLIGHTS

• This article investigates the influencing factors of China’s outward foreign direct investment (OFDI) in RCEP countries across quantiles.

• Influencing factors of China’s OFDI in RCEP countries have significant heterogeneity across quantiles.

• The strongest positive impact of trade exports on China’s OFDI occurs in countries with the least of China’s OFDI.

• Political stability won’t have significant effects on China’s OFDI to the RCEP countries with the least of China’s OFDI.

• Labour levels in RCEP countries with the most China’s OFDI will not have a significant impact on China’s OFDI.

• The impact of weight of people whose ancestors are from China of each RCEP country on China’s OFDI is positive.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

This research is partly supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China [Grant no. 71671062].