Domestic Interest Rate and Foreign Direct Investment under Institutional Uncertainty

It has been argued that foreign direct investment can exert upward or downward pressure on the domestic interest rate depending on foreign investors’ relative weights on internal and external finance with respect to the domestic economy. Additionally, a country’s level of institutional uncertainty can influence firms’ ability to obtain external finance. Using corruption to measure institutional uncertainty, we find that across countries a 1 percent increase in FDI inflows (outflows) is more likely to reduce the domestic interest rate by as much as 0.7 (1) percent. This empirical association between domestic interest rates and FDI flows is non-monotonically uncertainty-contingent