ABSTRACT It is often asserted with confidence that foreign direct investment (FDI) is beneficial for economic growth, especially in the host developing economy. Nevertheless, there is no empirical consensus on a positive effect of FDI on host-country growth, nor on the direction of causation. One of the reasons behind the lack of consensus is likely the presence of nonlinearities in the FDI and growth relationship. Most of the previous studies either used the linear empirical growth model or tried to bypass the nonlinearity issue by using ad hoc procedures. However, it is also true that growth theory provides little guidance about the exact nature of nonlinearity. Consequently, it is almost impossible to determine the exact form of nonlinear specification that would be appropriate for all data sets and data ranges. The paper investigates this challenging question in empirical growth literature that is the impact of FDI in promoting economic growth in developing economies without adopting any ad hoc procedure to capture the nonlinearity in the FDI–growth relationship. Based on a dualistic growth framework and a partial linear regression approach, it is possible to separate measures for sector externality and factor productivity effects between the two sectors (exports and non-exports sector). Sectoral externality is defined as a function of real FDI stocks per capita. Thereby, the adopted theoretical framework allows capturing both direct and indirect effects of FDI on economic growth across eight MENA countries during the period 1990–2016.

中文翻译：

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外国直接投资是否会影响中东和北非国家的增长？半参数固定效应方法

摘要经常有信心断言外国直接投资（FDI）有利于经济增长，特别是在东道国发展中的经济中。然而，对于外国直接投资对东道国增长的积极影响，也没有因果关系的方向，没有经验性的共识。缺乏共识的原因之一可能是外国直接投资和增长关系中存在非线性。先前的大多数研究要么使用线性经验增长模型，要么尝试通过使用临时程序来绕过非线性问题。但是，增长理论也很少为非线性的确切性质提供指导。因此，几乎不可能确定适用于所有数据集和数据范围的非线性规范的确切形式。本文调查了经验增长文献中的这一具有挑战性的问题，即外国直接投资对促进发展中经济体经济增长的影响，而没有采取任何特殊程序来捕捉外国直接投资与增长之间的非线性关系。基于二元增长框架和部分线性回归方法，可以对两个部门（出口和非出口部门）之间的部门外部性和要素生产率影响进行度量。部门外部性定义为人均实际外国直接投资存量的函数。因此，采用的理论框架涵盖了1990-2016年间八个中东和北非国家FDI对​​经济增长的直接和间接影响。