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Research suggests that the small‐ and medium‐sized Western European firms interested in direct investment in the United States are reluctant to co‐operate with state governments in formulating investment decisions. Research findings in the Upper Mid‐west indicate that the primary motivation of these firms to invest in the Upper Mid‐west is to shelter capital. The amount of importance the individual state governments place on reverse direct investment politicises the entire process of solicitation of potential direct investors. As a result, the small‐ and medium‐sized Western European firms tend to seek direct investment assistance from professional private sources.

The purpose of this study is to examine the link between country-level corporate governance and foreign direct investment in African economies for the period 2009-2015.

The authors use annual panel data of 40 African economies over the period of the study and use the system generalized method of moments (GMM) to establish the relationship between country-level corporate governance and foreign direct investment.

The authors find that African economies characterized by firms with high ethical values tend to attract a great deal of foreign direct investment. In addition, they highlight that when an economy is associated with effective corporate boards, it tends to attract much foreign direct investment. Further, this study reveals that the level of minority shareholders’ interests’ protection in an economy has a significant positive relationship with foreign direct investment. Finally, they document a negative relationship between effectiveness of regulation of securities and exchanges and foreign direct investment.

It is advised that sound and implementable corporate governance structures devoid of political interferences should be put in place in African economies, if the aim of using foreign direct investment to mitigate poverty by 2015 as part of the Millennium Development Goals is to be attained.

Empiricists have devoted considerable effort to estimate the factors that influence the level of foreign direct investment into African economies without taking into consideration the corporate governance structures in these economies. However, this paper seeks to examine the relationship between country-level corporate governance structures and foreign direct investment in African economies.

As the prolonged effect of the COVID-19 pandemic has materially impacted investment returns significantly, it is more crucial than ever for institutional investors to redefine their property portfolios using assets with better investment management potential and meaningful diversification benefits. The “alternative asset revolution” is gaining traction in the property investment space internationally among institutional investors due to the shifting investment attitudes towards the alternative property sectors. Australia's $205bn healthcare property sector is at the forefront of this revolution due to its societal significance, as well as its attractive investment qualities. This paper investigates the institutional investor management of the Australian healthcare property sector via both the direct and listed channels and empirically analyses its investment attributes.

Using the unique Morgan Stanley Capital International/Property Council of Australia quarterly data set for Australian direct healthcare property over 2006–2020, the risk-adjusted performance and portfolio diversification potential direct healthcare property and listed healthcare were assessed. A constrained mean-variance portfolio optimisation framework was used to develop a six-asset portfolio scenario to analyse the portfolio added-value benefits of both direct healthcare property and listed healthcare in a mixed-asset investment strategy. A similar set of analysis was performed using the post-global financial crisis (GFC) quarterly time series of 2009–2020 to investigate the healthcare asset class' performance dynamics in the post-GFC investment timeframe.

The results indicate that direct healthcare property and listed healthcare offer two key advantages for institutional investors in managing their property portfolios: (1) a stable yet superior risk-adjusted performance and (2) significant portfolio diversification potential in managing their property portfolios. Importantly, both direct healthcare property and listed healthcare provided valuable contributions in strengthening an investment portfolio's performance. The post-GFC sub-period analysis revealed a consistent conclusion regarding the healthcare asset class's performance attributes.

This is the first research that provides an independent empirical examination of the strategic importance of Australian healthcare property as a maturing alternative property sector that can serve both investment and environmental, social and governance goals of investors. This research presents a positive investment prognosis for the Australian healthcare property sector to achieve its institutionalised status as a mainstream asset class of the future.

Similar to real estate, infrastructure investments are regarded as providing a good inflation hedge and inflation protection. However, the empirical literature on infrastructure and inflation is scarce. Therefore, the purpose of this paper is to investigate the short- and long-term inflation-hedging characteristics, as well as the inflation protection associated with infrastructure and real estate assets.

Based on a unique data set for direct infrastructure performance, a listed infrastructure index, common direct and listed real estate indices, the authors test for short- and long-term inflation-hedging characteristics of these assets in the USA from 1991-2013. The authors employ the traditional Fama and Schwert (1977) framework, as well as Engle and Granger (1987) co-integration tests. Granger causality tests are further conducted, so as to gain insight into the short-run dynamics. Finally, shortfall risk measures are applied to investigate the inflation protection characteristics of the different assets over increasingly long investment horizons.

The empirical results indicate that in the short run, only direct infrastructure provides a partial hedge against inflation. However, co-integration tests suggest that all series have a long-run co-movement with inflation, implying a long-term hedge. The causality tests reveal reverse unidirectional causality – while real estate asset returns are Granger-caused by inflation, infrastructure asset returns seem to cause inflation. These findings further confirm that both assets represent a distinct asset class. Ultimately, direct infrastructure investments exhibit the most desirable inflation protection characteristics among the set of assets.

This study only presents results based on a composite direct infrastructure index, as no sub-indices for sub-sectors are available yet.

Investors seeking assets that are sensitive to inflation and mitigate inflation risk should consider direct infrastructure investments in their asset allocation strategy.

This is the first study to examine the ability of direct infrastructure to assess inflation risk.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the effects of foreign direct investment (FDI) into agriculture on domestic investment in agriculture.

Time series data from 1976 to 2007 was fitted to a derived model.

Foreign direct investment into agriculture crowd-in domestic investment into agriculture.

A targeted approach that will attract foreign direct investment into agriculture is required as to complement existing efforts at boosting domestic agricultural investment.

Numerous papers investigated the relationship between foreign direct investment and domestic investment at the aggregate national and regional levels. However, the evidence for this relationship has been conflicting. That for agriculture is rare. For Ghana, a developing agrarian economy that has promoted foreign direct investment for some decades now, it is imperative to establish the relationship between foreign direct investments and domestic investment. Also, the estimation was based on a theoretically derived model.

This paper aims to examine the relation between the proportion of direct investment to US total – direct and portfolio – investment abroad and their country‐specific determinants in developed and developing countries between 1997 and 2005, emphasizing the role of high‐quality accounting standards and corporate governance.

The study covers 46 developed and emerging market countries that are classified into four groups: Advanced, Asian, Central and Eastern European and Latin American. In order to eliminate the adverse effects of possible outliers in some observations on regression results, fixed effect robust regression (RR) techniques were conducted, in addition to fixed effect ordinary least squares (OLS) estimation using panel data.

It was found that the proportion of direct investment to US total investment abroad is strongly and negatively related to both high‐quality accounting standards and effective corporate governance, even after controlling for a number of variables found in previous research to be important: inflation, stock market capitalization, per capita gross domestic product, openness of destination countries’ economies and tax rates.

One major problem in international accounting research is the difficulty in obtaining of data. This problem was encountered in this study, too. Therefore, some emerging market countries are necessarily excluded from the sample.

The main focus is the contributions of accounting standards and corporate governance to explaining tradeoffs between US direct and portfolio investment in developed and developing countries. In this sense, this is – to the authors’ knowledge – the first study in this area.

Aim of the present monograph is the economic analysis of the role of MNEs regarding globalisation and digital economy and in parallel there is a reference and examination of some legal aspects concerning MNEs, cyberspace and e‐commerce as the means of expression of the digital economy. The whole effort of the author is focused on the examination of various aspects of MNEs and their impact upon globalisation and vice versa and how and if we are moving towards a global digital economy.

The purpose of the paper is to examine the role of securitised real estate within the confines of a multi‐asset investment portfolio and to identify if indeed securitised real estate can afford investors the desired investment benefits of direct property investment whilst mitigating many of the recognised barriers and risks.

The paper employs a suite of analytical techniques; lead‐lag correlations are utilised to examine market dynamics between listed and direct real estate markets across jurisdictions. Grainger causality and co‐integration techniques are applied to examine the nature and extent of relationships between investment markets with optimal portfolio analysis utilised to explore the role of securitised real estate and the optimum weighting allocation within the confines of a multi‐asset investment portfolio.

The findings demonstrated the unresponsive nature of direct real estate markets relative to listed real estate markets – in some jurisdictions the extent of lag can be as much as 12 months. Whilst the research did not identify a Grainger causality relationship between listed and direct property markets across the jurisdictions, co‐integration analysis does infer trend reverting price behaviour in the long run (ten years) between direct and listed real estate markets. Optimal portfolio analysis serves to demonstrate the crucial role of real estate within a multi‐asset portfolio in terms of both mitigating risk and enhancing performance over the ten‐year time series. Indeed, the optimal portfolio analysis highlights the compatibility and complementarity of listed and direct real estate within a multi‐asset investment portfolio.

The question if securitised real estate is a viable proxy for direct property investment is as inconclusive as it is enduring. In contrast to the large embodiment of previous work, this paper adopts an international market perspective depicting the global nature of securitised real estate investment markets whilst also reflecting on the extent of co‐integration between asset classes and across jurisdictions during a period of extreme financial and economic distress.

Chinese direct investments play a very prominent role in economic interactions with many African countries and result in many economic effects. This study aims to identify the employment effect of Chinese direct investments in Africa.

This paper empirically investigates the employment effects of Chinese direct investments using a panel data approach over the period 2007-2012.

The results suggested that for Africa as a whole, represented in 38 countries, Chinese direct investments had a significant positive effect on employment. They also indicated that the education level supported employment. In southern Africa, represented in 32 countries, the results were the same. So, there is a need to encourage and diversify Chinese investments. However, in northern Africa, represented in six countries, the results indicated that Chinese direct investments had an insignificant effect on employment, while education still had its positive effect. Therefore, it is important for northern African Governments to ensure issues like job creation and technology transfer in any future investment projects with China.

This study is characterized by the following contributions: it deals with a gap in the economic knowledge concerning the impact of Chinese investments on employment. Most of the previous studies have focused on the determinants of these investments or on their economic growth effects. It is the first study that measures the employment impact of Chinese investments in Africa at both macro and regional levels. The study deals with the period of financial crisis and its ensuing repercussions on the movement of investments, and this makes it more reflective of current developments through the most recent data available.

The availability of external equity finance is a key factor in the development of technology‐based firms (TBFs). However, although a wide variety of sources are potentially available, many firms encounter difficulties in securing funding. The venture capital community, particularly in the UK, has done little to finance early stage TBFs and has failed to cater adequately for the specific value‐added requirements of these firms. Non‐financial companies have the potential to become an important alternative source of equity finance for TBFs through the process of corporate venture capital (CVC) investment. Based on a telephone survey of 48 UK TBFs that have raised CVC, examines the role of CVC in the context of TBF equity financing. Shows that CVC finance has represented a significant proportion of the total external equity raised by the survey firms and has been particularly important during the early stages of firm development. In addition, CVC often provides investee firms with value‐added benefits, primarily in the form of technical‐ and marketing‐related nurturing and credibility in the marketplace. Concludes with implications for TBFs, large companies, venture capital fund managers and policy makers.