Interaction between foreing financial services and foreign direct investment in transition economies: an empirical analysis with focus on the manufacturing sector

This paper studies the nexus between financial and non-financial foreign direct investment in Transition Economies, which are members of the EU. Three questions, which are pointed out in the theoretical literature, are discussed in the paper. We use a dataset for nine Transition Economies over the period 1996-2007, for most regressions we apply GMM and for one regression 2SLS. The empirical results lead to three important statements: non-financial FDI is positively affected by financial services FDI and by market potential. Foreign banks in the EU Transition Economies are mainly driven by non-financial FDI and the capital intensity of a country. FDI crowds out domestic investment in the manufacturing sector. © 2012 University of Venice.