Essays on foreign direct investment in three resource-rich developing countries

This thesis aims to investigate and study a variety of dimensions of the relationship between FDI, economic performance, the determinants of FDI, firm ownership and firms’ efficiency in developing host countries. To achieve the aim and to examine the arguments of this thesis, the thesis’s structure includes six chapters, including four empirical chapters. The first empirical chapter attempts to find an answer to the question whether FDI contributes positively to the economic performance of the destination country. This chapter also provides insights into how the relationship of FDI’s depends on other important aspects, such as the geographical location, the nature of destination sector, the technological distance between the source and the destination countries. The second empirical chapter takes a broader, regional perspective and studies the determinants of the inflow of FDIs towards GCC countries, with a specific attention to their governments’ strategies to attract FDIs in priority sectors and priority source country. Finally, the third and the fourth empirical chapters turn to efficiency analysis. Specifically, they discuss the role of foreign-owned firms in promoting efficiency amongst domestic firms, FDI inflows and controlling for other selected key determinants: composition of the labour force, the firm size and the firm age. The analysis is performed for Dubai-based firms in the manufacturing and construction in the third empirical chapter, while the fourth empirical chapter seeks to answer the same questions for the financial sector