Does Financial Reform Promote the Inflow of FDI? Evidence from China's Panel Data

This paper empirically tests whether the host country's financial reform promotes the inflow of foreign direct investment (FDI). We test the hypothesis on the reform period Chinese provincial yearly panel data. The system generalized method of moments (GMM) estimation shows that the effect of financial reform on inward FDI to GDP ratios is not statistically significant after controlling for other variables and time and province effects. Consistent with the previous studies, market size and openness to international trade have significant effects on the FDI/GDP ratio in both Least squares dummy variables and system GMM estimations.