World Economy FDI: The OLI Framework

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Foreign Direct Investment: The OLI Framework
The “OLI” or “eclectic” approach to the study of foreign direct investment (FDI) was developed by John Dunning. (See, for example, Dunning (1977).) It has proved an extremely fruitful way of thinking about multinational enterprises (MNEs) and has inspired a great deal of applied work in economics and international business. In itself it does not constitute a formal theory that can be confronted with data in a scientific way, but it nevertheless provides a helpful framework for categorizing much (though not all) recent analytical and empirical research on FDI. This survey first summarizes the OLI paradigm and then uses it as a lens through which to review some of the highlights of this research, while also noting some important issues that it neglects.
“OLI” stands for Ownership, Location, and Internalization, three potential sources of advantage that may underlie a firm’s decision to become a multinational. Ownership advantages address the question of why some firms but not others go abroad, and suggest that a successful MNE has some firm-specific advantages which allow it to overcome the costs of operating in a foreign country. Location advantages focus on the question of where an MNE chooses to locate. Finally, internalization advantages influence how a firm chooses to operate in a foreign country, trading off the savings in transactions, holdup and monitoring costs of a wholly-owned subsidiary, against the advantages of other entry modes such as exports, licensing, or joint venture. A key feature of this approach is that it focuses on the incentives facing individual firms. This is now standard in mainstream international trade theory, but was not at all so in the 1970s, when FDI was typically seen through a Heckscher-Ohlin lens as an international