Foreign direct investment and economic growth: a dynamic study of measurement approaches and results

Figures & data

Figure 1. Top authors’ production over the time (1995-2019).

Source: Authors’ own research.

Figure 2. Conceptual structure map.

Source: Authors’ own research.

Figure 3. Topic dendrogram of hierarchical cluster analysis of keywords plus in the field of FDI-EG.

Source: Authors’ own research.

Figure 4. Factorial map of the documents with the highest contributions.

Source: Authors’ own research.

Figure 5. Strategic diagrams of FDI-EG research (1992-2021).

Source: Authors’ own research.

Figure 6. Thematic evolution of FDI-EG research (1992-2021).

Source: Authors’ own research.

Table 1. The nature of the FDI-EG relationship identified in the relevant literature.

The nature of the FDI-EG relationship	Representative references
Positive	Osei and Kim (2020); Khan et al. (2019); Li and Liu (2005)
Ambivalent	Li and Resnick (2003); Mawugnon and Qiang (2011); De Mello (1997)
Curvilinear relationship	Shahbaz et al. (2019); Hanif et al. (2019)

Source: Authors’ summary based on the literature review.

Table 2. The factors for the FDI-EG relationship identified in the relevant literature.

The factor for the FDI-EG relationship	Representative references
Financial development	Hermes and Lensink (2003); Macek et al. (2020)
Technology transfer	Borensztein et al. (1998); De Mello (1999)
Exports, imports and inflation	Ameer et al. (2017); Mahmoodi and Mahmoodi (2016)
Political relations	Song et al. (2020); Rădulescu and Druica (2014); Jensen (2003)

Source: Authors’ summary based on the literature review.

Table 3. The FDI-EG research in different fields of activity identified in the relevant literature.

The activity of the FDI-EG research	Representative references
Tourism	Bezic and Radic (2017); Broz et al. (2015)
Agriculture	Cicea et al. (2020)
Construction and building	Dylewski and Adamczyk (2012)
Environment	Pao and Tsai (2011); Sarkodie and Strezov (2019); Salahuddin et al. (2018)

Source: Authors’ summary based on the literature review.

Table 4. The top 10 highly total cited documents related to the FDI-EG relationship.

Rank	Title	Source	Type	Year	NC	AC	AN	IN	CN
1	‎How does foreign direct investment affect economic growth?	Journal of International Economics	Article	1998	1,788	74.50	3	4	3
2	Foreign direct investment and growth in EP and IS countries	Economic Journal	Article	1996	453	17.42	3	1	1
3	Democratic governance and multinational corporations: Political regimes and inflows of foreign direct investment	International Organization	Article	2003	430	22.63	1	1	1
4	Reversal of fortunes: Democratic institutions and foreign direct investment inflows to developing countries	International Organization	Article	2003	422	22.21	2	2	1
5	Foreign direct investment-led growth: evidence from time series and panel data	Oxford Economic Papers-New Series	Article	1999	421	18.30	1	1	1
6	Multivariate Granger causality between CO2 emissions, energy consumption, FDI (foreign direct investment) and GDP (gross domestic product): Evidence from a panel of BRIC (Brazil, Russian Federation, India, and China) countries	Energy	Article	2011	407	37.00	2	1	1
7	Foreign direct investment in developing countries and growth: A selective survey	Journal of Development Studies	Article	1997	377	15.08	1	1	1
8	When and where does foreign direct investment generate positive spill-overs? A meta-analysis	Journal of International Business Studies	Review	2009	330	25.38	2	2	2
9	Foreign direct investment, financial development and economic growth	Journal of Development Studies	Article	2003	322	16.95	2	2	1
10	Foreign direct investment and economic growth: An increasingly endogenous relationship	Word Development	Article	2005	311	18.29	2	2	1

Source: Authors’ summary based on the literature review.

Table 5. The top 10 highly average cited documents related to the FDI-EG relationship.

Rank	Title	Source	Type	Year	NC	AC	AN	IN	CN
1	‎How does foreign direct investment affect economic growth?	Journal of International Economics	Article	1998	1,788	74.50	3	4	3
2	Effect of foreign direct investments, economic development and energy consumption on greenhouse gas emissions in developing countries	Science of the Total Environment	Article	2019	199	66.33	2	1	1
3	The effects of electricity consumption, economic growth, financial development and foreign direct investment on CO2 emissions in Kuwait	Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews	Review	2018	157	39.25	4	4	4
4	Multivariate Granger causality between CO2 emissions, energy consumption, FDI (foreign direct investment) and GDP (gross domestic product): Evidence from a panel of BRIC (Brazil, Russian Federation, India, and China) countries	Energy	Article	2011	407	37.00	2	1	1
5	The impact of energy consumption, income and foreign direct investment on carbon dioxide emissions in Vietnam	Energy	Article	2015	250	35.71	2	1	1
6	Investigation of the environmental Kuznets curve for carbon emissions in Malaysia: Do foreign direct investment and trade matter?	Energy Policy	Article	2014	271	33.88	3	1	1
7	Foreign direct Investment-CO2 emissions nexus in Middle East and North African countries: Importance of biomass energy consumption	Journal of Cleaner Production	Article	2019	100	33.33	3	4	4
8	Fossil fuels, foreign direct investment, and economic growth have triggered CO2 emissions in emerging Asian economies: Some empirical evidence	Energy	Article	2019	93	31.00	4	4	2
9	A contribution of foreign direct investment, clean energy, trade openness, carbon emissions and economic growth to energy demand in UAE	Economic Modelling	Article	2014	216	27.00	3	4	3
10	Does foreign direct investment impede environmental quality in high-, middle-, and low-income countries?	Energy Economics	Article	2015	179	25.57	4	5	3

Source: Authors’ summary based on the literature review.

Table 6. The top 10 countries/regions of publications in co-authorship analysis.

Rank	Country/Region	Citations	Documents	Total link strength
1	USA	7,298	157	72
2	England	2,853	65	62
3	China	2,210	197	101
4	South Africa	1,982	24	14
5	Chile	1,782	2	2
6	Malaysia	1,598	55	25
7	Australia	1,329	50	32
8	France	1,202	25	24
9	Pakistan	932	41	47
10	Turkey	863	56	17

Source: Authors’ summary based on the literature review.

Table 7. The top 10 highly cited sources of documents in citation analysis.

Rank	Source	Citation	Document	Total link strength
1	Journal of International Economics	1,810	2	334
2	World Development	992	17	217
3	Energy	935	4	110
4	International Organization	894	3	64
5	Journal of Development Studies	886	6	209
6	Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews	778	7	145
7	Energy Policy	749	5	124
8	Economic Modelling	699	16	223
9	Economic Journal	638	2	151
10	Applied Economics	518	16	146

Source: Authors’ summary based on the literature review.

Table 8. The top 10 highly cited sources of documents in co-citation analysis.

Rank	Source	Citation	Total link strength	Impact factor	Rank in Economics
1	Journal of International Economics	1,147	48,683	2.255	91/373
2	World Development	946	44,321	3.869	33/373
3	American Economic Review	928	41,277	5.558	9/373
4	Energy Policy	859	46,897	5.042	13/373
5	Journal of Development Economics	692	30,427	2.649	73/373
6	Journal of Econometrics	651	30,384	1.577	162/373
7	Quarterly Journal of Economics	606	28,159	11.375	1/373
8	Applied Economics	563	26,233	1.103	230/373
9	Journal of International Business Studies	562	35,683	9.158	3/373
10	Economic Modelling	545	28,534	1.930	113/373

Source: Authors’ summary based on the literature review.

Table 9. Advantages and drawbacks of bibliometric and review measurement approaches.

Measurement approach	Advantages	Drawbacks
Science mapping analysis	Perceptual intuition	Non-deep understanding, data limited to database
Content analysis	Flexibility for scholars	Scholar subjectivity
Co-authorship analysis	Cooperation comparability	Data limited to database
Citation analysis	Impact comparability	Limited to self-citation, data limited to database
Co-citation analysis	Similarity comparability	Data limited to database

Source: Authors’ summary based on the literature review.

Osei, M. J., & Kim, C. J. (2020). Foreign direct investment and economic growth: Is more financial development better? Economic Modelling, 93, 154–161. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.econmod.2020.07.009

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Khan, M. B., Xie, H. B., & Saleem, H. (2019). Direct impact of inflow of foreign direct investment on poverty reduction in Pakistan: a bond testing approach. Economic Research-Ekonomska Istraživanja, 32 (1), 3647–3666. https://doi.org/10.1080/1331677X.2019.1670088

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Mawugnon, A. K., Qiang, F. (2011). The relationship between foreign direct investment and economic growth in Togo [1991-2009]. In Proceedings of the 8th International Conference on Innovation and Management (pp. 1269–1273).

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Shahbaz, M., Balsalobre-Lorente, D., & Sinha, A. (2019). Foreign direct Investment-CO2 emissions nexus in Middle East and North African countries: Importance of biomass energy consumption. Journal of Cleaner Production, 217, 603–614. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jclepro.2019.01.282

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Hanif, I., Raza, S. M. F., Gago-de-Santos, P., & Abbas, Q. (2019). Fossil fuels, foreign direct investment, and economic growth have triggered CO2 emissions in emerging Asian economies: Some empirical evidence. Energy, 171, 493–501. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.energy.2019.01.011

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