The impact of the Belt and Road Initiative on foreign direct investment from China, the United States, and major investor countries

This paper investigates the impact of the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) on foreign direct investment (FDI) from China and other major source countries, such as the United States (US), France, and Japan, by applying staggered difference-in-differences (DID) event study estimations to a gravity model. In addition to estimations using country-pair fixed effects, we estimate models with source and host country-year fixed effects to control for the effect through changes in any host country attribute due to the BRI, such as infrastructure, and highlight the effect through changes in bilateral relationships. We find that FDI from China, Hong Kong SAR, the US, Switzerland, Japan, and France to BRI countries increased in the post-BRI period, whereas FDI from the United Kingdom (UK), the Netherlands, and Luxembourg decreased. After controlling for country-year fixed effects, there remains a post-BRI upward trend in FDI from the US, Switzerland, and France and a downward trend in FDI from the UK, the Netherlands, and Luxembourg. These findings suggest that FDI from non-China countries to BRI countries can be affected by their bilateral relationships. For example, the US may have invested more in BRI countries to strategically compete with China in those locations, whereas France and Switzerland may have done so because of investment cooperation with China in Africa. • We estimated the effect of the BRI on FDI from major investor countries. • BRI countries receive more FDI from China, the US, and Switzerland. • BRI countries receive less FDI from the UK and, the Netherlands. • The effect of BRI differs due to source countries’ strategic policies to China.