Overseas Education Experience Of Local Officials And FDI

After the reform and opening up,foreign direct investment(FDI)flow into China in large quantities.It has greatly promoted the development of China's economy that large inflows of FDI can not only alleviate the financing constraints can also produce spillover effects.However,FDI in various provinces of China has shown the phenomenon of uneven distribution.Existing literatures have done a lot of research and made some reasonable explanation from multiple perspectives,but ignored the important role played by local officials of China in the process of attracting FDI flow into the local.This article begins with the dual incentives faced by local officials under the regionally decentralized authoritarian system,to investigate the causes of the uneven distribution of FDI in various provinces of China from the perspective of local officials' overseas education experience.In regionally decentralized authoritarian system,the dual incentives of fiscal and political incentives give local officials the inherent power to develop the local economy.Because the investment can directly and quickly promote local economic development,it has become a means on which local officials rely generally.FDI is clearly more attractive in all kinds of investment,therefore local officials will try their best to give priority to fight for FDI flow into the local.In the process of attracting FDI,local officials with overseas education experience can make use of the advantages given by their overseas education experience to promote FDI flow into the local.Using China's provincial panel data from 1986 to 2013,this article investigated the influence of overseas education experience of local officials on FDI.The results showed that,governors with study abroad experience really can significantly promote local inflow of FDI,and secretaries of provincial party committee with overseas education experience have no effect on local FDI.Additionally,the robustness test and sensitivity analysis also support this conclusion.As for the differences of party committee secretaries and provincial governors,may be due to the difference in the role of economic works,which the former focuses on the strategic grasp and the latter tend to the implementation of specific matters,thus governors with overseas education experience can give full play to its advantages given by overseas education experience to attract FDI in his work.