FDI and Economic Growth in EU13 Countries: Cointegration and Causality Tests

Abstract

Foreign direct investments are seen as a prerequisite for gaining and maintaining competitiveness. The research objective of this study is to examine the relationship between foreign direct investment (FDI) and economic growth in “new” European Union member countries using various unit root, cointegration, as well as causality tests. The paper employs annual data for FDI and gross domestic product (GDP) from 2002 to 2018 for the 13 most recent members of European Union (EU13): Bulgaria, Croatia, Cyprus, the Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Malta, Poland, Romania, Slovakia and Slovenia. An estimated panel ARDL (PMG) model found evidence that there is a long-run equilibrium between the LogGDP, LogFDI and LogFDIP series, with the rate of adjustment back to equilibrium between 3.27% and 20.67%. In the case of the LogFDI series, long-run coefficients are highly statistically significant in all four models, varying between 0.0828 and 0.3019. These coefficients indicate that a 1% increase in LogFDI increases LogGDP between 0.0828% and 0.3019%. Results of a Dumitrescu-Hurlin panel causality test indicated that a relationship between the GDP growth rate and FDI growth rate is only indirect. Finally, only weak evidence was shown that FDI had a statistically significant impact on GDP in the EU13 countries over the period 2002-2018. This report of findings contributes to the literature concerning FDI and economic growth, namely regarding the current understanding of the relationship between these two factors.