An Empirical Investigation on The Effect of Business Environment Factors on The FDI Inflows in Pakistan: The Moderating Role of Political Stability

Abstract

This study has examined the moderating role of Political Stability (PS) on the relationships between microeconomic variables, business environment variables and the Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) inflows in Pakistan.This study confined to the annual data for the period from 1991 to 2011 obtained from the authentic sources.The empirical analysis involved using the ADF test to check the stationary of the data, the EViewssoftware and hierarchal regression using the SPSS statistical software package. The statistical results of the study confirmed that that degree of openness, the Labor minimum wage and Infrastructure were significant predictors of FDI inflows. On the other hand, other variables such as GDP growth rate and the rule of law were not significant in determining the FDI inflows in Pakistan.However, the GDP growth rate tends to be a significant determinant of FDI inflows when the moderating effect of the Political stability is accounted for. These findings, thus, strongly suggested that political stability is crucial for the country’s domestic and foreign investment in the future course of direction.