Acta academica karviniensia 2014, 14(3):30-38 | DOI: 10.25142/aak.2014.045

THE CRITICAL REVIEW OF DEVELOPMENT THEORIES OF FOREIGN DIRECT INVESTMENT

Tomáš Dudáš

Ekonomická univerzita v Bratislava, Fakulta medzinárodných vzťahov, Dolnozemská cesta 1/b. 852 35 Bratislava 5, Email:tomas.dudas@euba.sk

Foreign direct investments play a crucial role in the global economy nowadays and they have the ability to boost economic development in less developed countries. The aim of the article is to critically review the most important theories that deal with the impact of FDI flows on economic development. Due to the limited space the article focuses on the three most important theories - on Raymond Vernon's product life cycle theory, on the Japanese FDI development theories and the FDI development theory of John Dunning. The results of our review show that although these theories failed to develop a universally acceptable framework, they can be certainly useful as theoretic framework for empirical research on country level.

Keywords: economic development, foreign direct investments, FDI theories

JEL classification: F21

Received: May 13, 2014; Accepted: September 23, 2014; Published: September 30, 2014  Show citation