Trends and Determinants of FDI with Implications of COVID-19 in BRICS

Foreign direct investment (FDI) movement to any country is recognized as an important criterion for economic strength and potentiality. Hence, the present study analyzes the motives of FDI inflows through the determinants and channels, namely horizontal or vertical FDIs and the impact of COVID-19 on FDI Inflows in BRICS countries during the period 1990–2020. The Kinked Exponential (deterministic) trend, and Zivot and Andrew’s trend equations are applied for the growth analysis of FDI inflows. Regarding the estimation of channels of FDI inflows in terms of horizontal, vertical, and hybrid motivations, dynamic panel data analysis using GMM for BRICS economies together and ARDL-PMG for individual countries is made. The findings show significantly positive growth in FDI inflows in all BRICS countries except India during the first decade of the present century. After that, these countries have experienced either significantly or insignificantly declining trends, except India, where the trend has significantly increased during this later period. From the overall analysis, we see that both horizontal and vertical motivations play a dominant role in determining FDI inflows for the BRICS countries. However, from country-wise estimations, it is observed that both horizontal and vertical motives are dominant factors for FDI inflows to India and Russia. In contrast, the horizontal motive of it is significant for China. For Brazil and South Africa, no motive behind FDI inflows appears significant. The pandemic situation significantly impacts attracting FDI in Brazil, while it remains insensitive in the rest of the BRICS countries. The findings reveal that FDI determinants are country-specific. So, the BRICS countries can design proper FDI policy and adopt more reforms in attracting FDI that may help improve their economic situation.

Dynamic Panel Data Analysis of Capital Structure Determinants: Evidence from Iraqi Banks

This study investigates if the choice of capital structure of Iraqi banks could be interpreting through factors which have been studied by prior studies, which represented by determinants of capital structure choice (i.e., bank size, bank profitability, bank growth, tangibility, bank age). Using dynamic panel GMM for the period 2005 to 2019, this study maintains the explore on the determinants of capital structure of Iraq banks "developing country" that has circumstances likely to be quite different from those in developed and other major developing countries, particularly in terms of it deteriorating economic environment. The findings indicate that the bank size, bank profitability, bank age have a dominant role in explaining the variation in the long-term debt ratios of Iraqi banks. Meanwhile, only bank size, bank profitability, bank growth, bank age has a leading role in interpreting the variation of short-term debt ratios in the Iraqi banks. The current study has initiated some basis to discover the capital structure determinants of Iraqi banks upon which a more detailed evaluation could be based. Moreover, the experimental results can help Iraqi banks directors to choose the optimum structure of capital.