Journal of African Trade

Volume 4, Issue 1-2, December 2017, Pages 61 - 74

Foreign direct investment, productivity and the technology gap in African economies

Authors
Christopher Malikanea, Christopher.Malikane@wits.ac.za, Prosper Chitambarab, *, prosper@ledriz.co.zw
aSchool of Economic and Business Sciences (SEBS), University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, South Africa
bLabour and Economic Development Research Institute of Zimbabwe (LEDRIZ), Harare, Zimbabwe
*Corresponding author.
Corresponding Author
Prosper Chitambaraprosper@ledriz.co.zw
Received 15 October 2015, Revised 21 November 2017, Accepted 25 November 2017, Available Online 24 February 2018.
DOI
10.1016/j.joat.2017.11.001How to use a DOI?
Keywords
E22; F21; F23; O16
Abstract

This paper investigates the impact of foreign direct investment on total factor productivity conditional on relative backwardness in a panel of 45 African countries over the period 1980–2012. We use two measures of relative backwardness, namely: the distance from technological frontier and the income gap. We apply the fixed-effects and two-step system GMM methods. We find a generally positive but weak effect of FDI on productivity growth. Meanwhile, the results do not support the convergence theory of Findlay (1978) and Wang and Blomstrom (1992), that relative backwardness would result in higher productivity growth via the adoption of foreign technologies.

Copyright
© 2017 Afreximbank. Production and hosting by Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
Open Access
This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC license (http://creativecommons.org/licences/by-nc/4.0/).

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Journal
Journal of African Trade
Volume-Issue
4 - 1-2
Pages
61 - 74
Publication Date
2018/02/24
ISSN (Online)
2214-8523
ISSN (Print)
2214-8515
DOI
10.1016/j.joat.2017.11.001How to use a DOI?
Copyright
© 2017 Afreximbank. Production and hosting by Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
Open Access
This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC license (http://creativecommons.org/licences/by-nc/4.0/).

Cite this article

TY  - JOUR
AU  - Christopher Malikane
AU  - Prosper Chitambara
PY  - 2018
DA  - 2018/02/24
TI  - Foreign direct investment, productivity and the technology gap in African economies
JO  - Journal of African Trade
SP  - 61
EP  - 74
VL  - 4
IS  - 1-2
SN  - 2214-8523
UR  - https://doi.org/10.1016/j.joat.2017.11.001
DO  - 10.1016/j.joat.2017.11.001
ID  - Malikane2018
ER  -