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theses

Increased cross-border human migration has led to a significant increase in the number of foreign-born workers in the business and the society of several recipient countries. In this dissertation, I examine the role of migrants in influencing the foreign direct investment (FDI) patterns between their country of origin (COO) and their country of residence (COR). Drawing on the extant international business, management and macroeconomics literature, I propose a novel theoretical framework on migrants, institutions and FDI, that extends conventional thinking on the drivers of FDI by relating the literature on FDI determinants to the institutional economics and the migration literature streams. Using migrant roles as an anchor for this framework, three roles are identified - (1) Migrants as carriers and conduits of knowledge; (2) Migrants as creators of institutional affinity; (3) Migrants as connectors of institutional environments; this framework forms the basis for the three empirical studies in this dissertation. In my first study, I examine the role of migrants as creators of institutional affinity (with respect to their COO), and as connectors of institutional environments of their COO and COR, using panel data estimation methods. In my second study, I zoom in to examine the effect of migrant induced institutional affinity and institutional connectedness on FDI at the regional level. In my third study, I examine the extent to which migrant decision-makers influence outward FDI to their COO. I build a novel database for measuring migrant induced institutional changes in the United States (U.S.) context. In addition to that, I rely on the data from the U.S. Census Bureau and the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis. I find that institutional affinity in the migrants' COR with respect to their COO, is a strong predictor of future inward FDI from the migrants' COO for firms from developing countries. Second, I find that migrant decision-makers (from a COO) in a COR are a strong predictor of outward FDI to their COO, when the COO is a developing country. Lastly, I find that institutional connectedness provided by migrants has a positive effect on inward FDI for both, developing and developed countries.

ETD_7419

Ph.D.

Includes bibliographical references

by Pallavi Shukla

doi:10.7282/T36T0Q0X

ETD doctoral

The author owns the copyright to this work.