Infrastructure Endowment and Corporate Income Taxes as Determinants of Foreign Direct Investment in Central- and Eastern European Countries
LICOS Discussion Paper No. 193/2007
29 Pages Posted: 16 Mar 2008
Date Written: 2007
Abstract
This paper analyzes the importance of taxes on corporate income and production-related tangible infrastructure as determinants of Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) in Central- and Eastern European Countries (CEECs). We operationalize taxes using effective average tax rates on the bilateral level and employ indices derived from principal component analysis as a proxy for the infrastructure endowment. In the empirical analysis we control for a possible interrelation between taxes and infrastructure as determinants of FDI - an issue usually neglected in the literature. Thus, we posit that there are likely to be interaction effects between taxes and infrastructure as determinants of FDI. Specifically, a favorable infrastructure endowment may compensate for relatively high taxes. Hence, higher taxes may not deter FDI. The results from our panel econometric analysis of bilateral outward FDI flows of 7 home in 8 CEECs for the 1995-2004 period in an augmented gravity model setting show that (i) both taxes and infrastructure play a role in the location decisions made by Multinational Enterprises; (ii) telecommunication and transport infrastructure are of special significance to FDI; and (iii) the tax-rate sensitivity of FDI indeed decreases with the level of infrastructure endowment.
Keywords: foreign direct investment, transition economies, infrastructure, taxation
JEL Classification: F15, F21, F23
Suggested Citation: Suggested Citation
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