Determinants of sustainable FDI: a panel data investigation

Purpose The purpose of this paper is twofold: to explore the interrelationships between FDI with growth and sustainability dimension; and to empirically analyze the four dimensions, namely, environmental, economic, social and governance of sustainable FDI for South Asia and West Asia. Design/methodology/approach The data utilized in the paper is sourced from the World Development Indicators and the Worldwide Governance Indicators, covering South and West Asian region over the period 2011-2017. The paper employed both static and dynamic panel (two-step difference generalized methods of moments) estimation methods. Findings The results established a significant and robust relationship of past year FDI inflows with the current year's value of FDI inflows for both the regions. Further, some variances in the relationships such as control of corruption, long-run carbon emissions, research and development, number of trademark applications as per the contextual factors have been detected. Research limitations/implications The conclusions related to gender and governance found in this paper will be of interest to both researchers and policy makers for substantially reorienting the sustainability attributes to the foreign investment. Originality/value The authors' main contributions are: to encapsulate the conceptual framework into an empirical model by combining all the four dimensions, namely, environmental, economic, social and governance; to have analyzed the possible differences and similarities in the study based on South and West Asia; to have explored the relationship between gender and FDI.