Asymmetric Effects of Corruption on U.S. Manufacturing MNCs' FDI: Horizontal FDI & Vertical FDI

Importance of corruption as one of the determinants explaining FDI movement has been increased. On the theoretical perspective, corruption can be assumed to induce an additional cost of doing businesses since multi-national corporations (MNCs) pay bribes to government bureaucrats for getting investment license, tax assessment, and so on. Accordingly, level of corruption in the host country should be considered for MNCs in making decisions to invest foreign markets. However previous studies evaluating the effect of corruption of the host country on FDI do not distinguish types of FDI. In this study, a difference for FDI is made between two types(horizontal and vertical FDI) of FDI by using the destination market for the sales of the U.S. affiliates. Using the 50 host countries of U.S. manufacturing FDI over the periods 1999- 2007, this study finds that vertical FDI(measured by affiliates sales back to the U.S.) is deterred by corruption, but horizontal FDI(measured by affiliates local sales within a host country) is not. Therefore, the empirical results suggest that the host countries wishing vertical investment from U.S. manufacturing MNCs should lower corruption.