THE IMPACT OF ENVIRONMENTAL STRINGENCY ON THE FOREIGN DIRECT INVESTMENTS OF THE OECD COUNTRIES

摘要

The main objective of this paper is to evaluate the impact of the environmental stringencyrnon trade and the foreign direct investments (FDI) in particular. To do so, both theoreticalrnand empirical investigations are performed. During the empirical investigation, an indexrnof environmental sensitivity performance (IESP) is constructed for the OECD countries.rnAdditionally, themain determinants of the OECDcountries’ FDI outflows are also analysedrnalongside with the environmental sensitivity variable for the countries in the sample.rnThe empirical analysis in this paper finds some evidence to suggest that environmen-rntal stringency has an important impact on the FDI outflows of the OECD countries. Thernimpact of the degree of environmental stringency on the FDI is significantly positivernimplying a direct relationship between FDI outflows and relative environmental sensitivityrnperformance of the OECD countries.