Motives of Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) in Ethiopia: An Empirical Analysis

Abstract

The central aim of this paper is to investigate the major motives of inward FDI to Ethiopia from 1992-2015. Various economic and financial variables were taken into consideration to assess the relationship between FDI and its motivational factors. Ordinary Least Square method was applied to estimate the association, while Johansen’s co-integration test was employed to examine the combination, and Vector Auto-regressive (VAR) model was used to check whether there is a long run relationship between FDI and explanatory variables. The statistical results show that there is positive and significant relationship between FDI and market size, trade openness, exchange rate and financial freedom whereas inflation had negative and significant association with FDI. However, investment freedom and economic globalization indicated an insignificant relation. Even though all variables jointly affect FDI in the long run, the VAR result didn’t reveal any long term relationship between FDI and its motivational factors individually