External Debt Default and Foreign Direct Investments

Abstract We analyze the effect of a country’s defaults and restructuring its’ official and private external debt on its ability to attract foreign direct investment. We use different types of foreign direct investments: FDI Flows, Horizontal FDI, vertical FDI, cross-border mergers & acquisitions, and greenfield FDI. Using the Poisson-Pseudo Maximum Likelihood (PPML) estimation method, which has never been used in the literature to do a similar analysis, we find that external debt default decreases all types of FDIs. Furthermore, we also conduct a more granular sensitivity analysis by analyzing the effect of political risk ratings, effect on non-advanced economies, and effect on highly indebted poor countries (HIPC). We find that cross-border mergers and acquisitions (M&A) decrease as corruption risk decreases and increases as law and order improve. For HIPC countries, official external debt restructuring increases greenfield FDI. JEL classification number: C1, C33, D72, F21, H63, O57. Keywords: Debt Default, Restructuring, Foreign Direct Investment (FDI), External Debt, ICRG, Poisson-Pseudo Maximum Likelihood (PPML), Political Risk.