The dynamics of Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) inflows in developing economies: Evidence from Bangladesh

Abstract Considering the importance of economic development in attracting Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) inflows to the developing economies, this study aims to investigate the relationship between FDI inflows and economic development in Bangladesh using annual time series data for the period of 1991 to 2020. The empirical analysis is performed employing the Autoregressive Distributed Lag (ARDL) bound test method in order to find out the long-run as well as the short-run relationship between FDI inflows and economic development. The empirical evidence from the study indicates that the economic development indicator does not have any statistically significant positive relationship with FDI inflows in the long-run. Other variables, namely the interest rate and export receipts, have a significant statistical relationship with FDI inflows, and the right direction of these two variables in terms of the expected sign of the coefficients shows that to some extent there has been an insightful economic relationship. However, in the short-run, such a relationship between FDI inflows and economic development is statistically justified, where the negative coefficient of the error correction term indicates the dynamic adjustment to the long-run equilibrium has been found to be made in a consistent manner, which is supported by the statistical theory. Finally, this study also suggests that the government should take proper measures to attract higher FDI inflows in order to ensure the faster socio-economic development of the country as a wholeCite this item Islam, M. M. (2022). The dynamics of Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) inflows in developing economies: Evidence from Bangladesh. Scholars Journal of Research in Social Science (SJRSS), 2(4), 13-21