Foreign Direct Investment Resilience During Times of Crisis: A Comparative Analysis Between Selected Eastern European and African Countries

Abstract

Times of crisis provide the opportunity to question the behaviour of socioeconomic agents and specific phenomena around economic growth's resilience. Hence, this paper relies on econometrics to analyse the data compiled from secondary sources mainly available within the World Development Indicators to comparatively examine foreign investors' behavioural shifts in Eastern Europe and Africa during significant crises that the world faced during the last two decades. The aim is to identify, through their impacts, the above behavioural shifts and thereby assist policymakers in advancing policies strengthening and nurturing foreign direct investments' "FDI" resilience and maintenance during and post-crises. It was uncovered that foreign investors appear to reduce their exposure during crises in Eastern Europe and Africa. The decrease in inflows seems to be higher in Eastern Europe than in Africa. However, the change in net FDI effects on infrastructure, trade openness, and economic growth is more significant in African economies. It is therefore believed that, to nurture FDI 81 Институт за међународну политику и привреду (ИМПП)