Abstract

Foreign direct investment flows had increased worldwide over the last decades and many specialists think that there is a strong correlation among trade, FDI, labor force, and economic growth in the receiving countries. Based on available statistical data, we will examine the effects of FDI on GDP growth and the causality relations between GDP, trade openness, labor force, and FDI in case of Romania for the last decades. The ARDL bound testing approach is used to study the existence of a long-run relationship between FDI, trade, labor, and economic growth. Then the error-correction based Granger causality test is used to test the direction of causality between the variables. The results revealed that there is cointegration among the variables when real GDP and foreign direct investment are the dependent variables. Foreign direct investment, trade openness, and labor force are the main determinants of economic growth in the long run in Romania. In addition, the increase of gross domestic product, exports, imports and labor force promote foreign direct investment in the long run.

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