Thesis (M.B.A.)--University of Hong Kong, 1985.

Thesis (M.Com. (Economics & Economic History)) - Rhodes University, 2009. / A thesis submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Commerce (Financial Markets)

Thesis (M.M.S.)--Carleton University, 1988. / Also available in electronic format on the Internet.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Columbia University, 1985. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 424-446).

Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) is a significant source of capital for economic growth in developing countries. The increasing financial links across countries, especially between industrial and developing countries have been associated with the liberalization of international financial markets. Moreover, globalization in production, due to technological innovations in communications and transport coupled with better policies in developing countries, are often considered to be the primary forces that drove globalization and foreign direct investment in the 1990s and recent times. The literature on FDI can be categorised into three main groups: the first group investigates the effect of FDI on macroeconomic indicators, such as economic growth, exchange rate, rate of inflation, balance of payments, and rate of unemployment. The second group examines the impact of FDI on different factors such as technology transfer to recipient countries, management practices by national firms, and labour skill and productivities in hosting countries. The third group focuses on the characteristics of FDI and the driving forces for its inflows and outflows to different countries. This research focuses on the latter strand thereby enabling an investigation of the location characteristics of MNEs location decision in the banking sector. The main aim of this thesis is to examine and analyse FDI location characteristics in the Ghanaian banking sector. This has been achieved by making use of both qualitative and quantitative data series’ to ascertain whether the major location factors are the characteristics/determinants of MNEs location decision in relation to a specific industry (banking) and a specific country (Ghana). Using a multimethod approach, the findings of this thesis reveal that political and legal factors are very significant, followed by macroeconomic policy factors and infrastructure factors. Market factors and labour market factors which have been found in previous studies (Lall 2001; Asiedu; 2003; Dunning 2004; Helpman; 2006 and Felbermayr et al. 2011) to be important determinants of FDI inflows have been found in this thesis to be the least important factors for MNEs’ location decision in relation to FDI inflows to Ghana.

This dissertation examines the hitherto neglected role foreign, and specifically German, bankers played in the Chinese economy and the history of modern economic globalisation in China during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. By following the history of the German Deutsch-Asiatische Bank (DAB) during the last two decades of the Qing dynasty and the first years of the Chinese republic, this dissertation shows how the interaction between foreign bankers and Chinese officials, bankers and entrepreneurs led to the rapid internationalisation of Chinese finance, both in terms of public finance and the banking sector of China’s treaty port economy. Unlike most previous literature, which only depicts foreign banks in modern China as mere manifestations of foreign imperialism, this dissertation demonstrates that foreign banks acted as intermediary institutions that financially connected China to the first global economy and provided the financial infrastructure necessary to make modern economic globalisation in China during the late 19th and early 20th centuries possible. At the same time, this dissertation stresses the importance of Chinese agency for the operation of foreign banks in China’s treaty ports and shows that the interaction between foreign bankers and Chinese actors was made up as much of cooperation as of conflict. In sum, this dissertation not only furthers our knowledge of the role foreign banks played in the modern Chinese economy, but also contributes to our understanding of how China was financially integrated into the first global economy.

The neo-liberal policies of liberalization and deregulation, as utilized by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) in its dealings with countries of the developing world, tend to facilitate the conditions for financial crisis. This can be traced by examining the economic crises of Mexico in 1982 and 1994/95, Asia in 1997 and Russia in 1998 and looking at the main causes and triggers of these crises. It is evident that the financial vulnerability that these countries suffered from existed due to, and not in spite of, these policy prescriptions. The IMF continues to present these policies as proven successes - a view that this dissertation contests. Further to this, the policies that the Fund uses are formulated for use in semi-peripheral economies and have little relationship to the actual economic environments of peripheral countries such as those of sub-Saharan Africa or Papua New Guinea. The ideology of free-markets and globalization is seen as unassailable by the IMF. By encouraging countries to remain part of the global financial system through debt rescheduling and open-markets policies, the IMF holds an increasingly fragile economic environment together. This dissertation formulates and tests four hypotheses in relation to Mexico, Asia, Russia and Papua New Guinea and the periphery. These are - (1) If there are periods of 'irrational exuberance' among investors in Third World debt, these are likely to contribute to debt crises. (2) If IMF policies are implemented in the Third World as dictated, then their primary benefits will accrue to the elites in those countries and in the developed world. (3) If Third World countries open their economies to foreign capital, then they are more likely to experience debt crises. (4) If IMF policies are implemented in peripheral countries, then they are even less likely to be successful than in semi-peripheral countries.