The Next Crisis

Foreign direct investment (and to a lesser extent portfolio equity investment) have been widely heralded as the key benefit that globalization now offers the South and the principal mechanism to kickstart economies into rapid growth. Certainly, this book argues, the 1990s have seen a dramatic increase in foreign capital invested in some developing countries. Equally true, it represents a completely different kind of capital injection from the massive lending by Western banks which led to the debt crisis of the 1980s. But how beneficial is the new wave of foreign investment likely to prove? In this careful and penetrating economic study, David Woodward analyses what is actually happening, its various impacts and just how little we still know about it.More dramatically, David Woodward shows how FDI may have actually contributed to the Asian financial crisis and could in future lead to a new wave of similar financial crises throughout the developing world. This book raises profound questions about the current euphoria over attracting foreign investment and suggests important new research agendas.