Is China different? A meta-analysis of the effects of foreign direct investment on domestic firms

Empirical evidence suggests that China has benefited from foreign direct investment (FDI). An important question that remains unanswered is whether China has benefited more from FDI than other countries in general, and other transition and developing countries in particular. This paper investigates this issue by performing a meta-analysis on a sample of 67 country-specific studies yielding 137 observations that have gauged the link between FDI and measures of economic growth. The results suggest that the impact of FDI is, on average, more positively significant for China than for the full sample of countries, but that the difference between China and other transition economies is less clear.