Economic Performance of U.S. Multinational Agribusinesses: Foreign Direct Investment and Firm Strategy

This paper empirically assesses the sequential relationships among firm strategic factors, FDI activity, and economic performance for a sample of U.S.-based Multinational agribusinesses. The most important findings of this research is a positive direct effect of FDI on performance, the complementary effect between FDI and firm strategic factors (positive and significant interaction terms) on performance, and the positive effect of FDI on performance given some thresholds of firm strategic factors. Specifically, it provides insights about the direct effect of FDI on performance, as well as about the joint effect of firm size and FDI, marketing intensity and FDI, and capital intensity and FDI on performance. These findings provide evidence that FDI activity is an important factor for U.S. agribusiness financial strength.