Collaborative Research: Foreign Capital Liberalization, Structural Change, and Economic Empowerment of Vulnerable Groups

Many countries have promoted increased foreign capital liberalization as a path to economic growth and development. However, little is known about the social consequences of these policies. This research project will study the socio-political and distributional effects of foreign direct investment (FDI) induced by these policy changes.

Using the staggered liberalization of access to foreign capital across several industry groups, the research will attempt to answer the following questions: (1) Does foreign capital liberalization in the manufacturing and/or service sector accelerate the process of changing the structure of economies? (2) What are the social, economic, health, and political, and distributional consequences of foreign capital liberalization policies, especially for vulnerable groups, such as women, racial and other minorities? The research project will build a large data set disaggregated at local administration level to study these issues.

The results of this research project will guide policies to deal with the possible economic effects of foreign direct investment. It will also provide guidance on policies to decrease the possible negative social consequences and distributional effects of foreign direct investments.

This project exploits the staggered liberalization of foreign capital flows to different disaggregated industries at different times to measure the causal average and distributional effects of foreign capital liberalization. This project has two parts: The first part measures the effects on occupational switching, gender attitudes, human capital, and fertility.

The second part will measure the effects on social outcomes related to the rise of populism, such as crime, political attitudes, and religious violence. Treatment of industry by foreign capital liberalization is measured by the pre- and post-reform mix of industries in a district. The analysis will then use a local labor market difference-in-differences (diff-in-diff) strategy to compares outcome change in affected and non affected districts from the pre- to post-reform period.

The project will build panel datasets that will be harmonized at the district-level to measure the distribution effects of policy changes. This project will provide one of the first causal evidence on the effects of foreign capital liberalization on structural change as well as on a broad range social effects, such as female labor force participation, fertility, and education.

The results of this project will provide guidance on policies to decrease the possible negative social consequences and distributional effects of foreign direct investments.

This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.