FDI’s Effect on Russian Far Eastern Federal District Economic Growth

Abstract

These years the Far East of Russia has emerged as an important regional destination of foreign direct investment (FDI). This paper aims to investigate the causal relationships between inward FDI and economic growth in the particular case of Russian Far East featured as one of the world’s most resource-rich regions. Vector Autoregressive (VAR) Impulse Responses and Granger Causality Tests were adopted as major research methods. While previous empirical assessment was based on the data for the 1970s and the 1980s, this paper uses the most current data.Annual data set was used covering from 1990 to 2011, focusing on FDI inflows in the Russian region from four source countries, namely South Korea, China, Japan and the USA. They are major trade and investment partners for Russian Far East and thus comparisonof both theoretical and practical interest. This paper has demonstrated that foreign direct investment still poses some problems to realize the resource potential in the Russian Far East and consequent increase in exports to the APEC countries. Nevertheless, this study suggests that joint venture as an alternative means will be preferably employed to increase exports of resource products from the region. This paper also suggests that the future foreign investment should be directed towards more processing-oriented activities than logging which aggravates the region’s negative attitudes towards foreign investment. The main results demonstrated the long-run relationships between FDI inflows and economic growth in the Russian Far East and also bi-directional causality between FDI source countries. And to attract FDI inflows into Far East, the government shall continue its efforts in constructing promising economic and investment environment; but to promote economic growth, it will recourse to other original momentum.;최근 러시아극동지역에 대한 외국인투자(FDI)는 급격한증가세를 보이고 있다. 본 연구는 외국인 직접투자가 풍부한 천연자원지역인 러시아극동의경제성장에 미치는 영향을 분석하고 있다. 과거의 연구가 주로 1970-80 년대의 자료를 이용해 이루어진 점에 비추어 가장 최근의 자료를 이용해 기존의 연구결과와 비교하였다. 실증분석은 VAR 을 이용하여역할에 대해 집중 분석하였다.1990-2011 년을 대상으로 중국, 일본, 미국, 한국총 4 주변 강대국의 FDI 자료를 이용하여 실시하였다. 러시아 자원개발에 대한 투자가 아직 본격화되지 못하였는데, 향후 러시아동부지역의 풍부한 자원확보를 겨냥한투자가 기대된다. 수출이 FDI 의 경제성장에 미치는 영향을 증가시킨것으로 나타났다. 실증분석 결과 장기적으로 FDI 는 경제성장에 긍정적인 영향을 미친 것으로 나타났다.수출과 자본 또한 경제성장에 기여하였으나 인적자본은 그렇지 않은 것으로 나타났다. 수출이 FDI 의 경제성장에 미치는 영향을 증가시킨다는 가설은 기각되었으며 기술 지식의 확산 등에 의해 1 인당 실질 GDP 가 낮을수록 성장률이 증가한다는 소득수렴가설도 기각되었다