What can Trigger the Resumption of Economic Growth in a Small Open Economy like Greece: Exports or Inward FDI?

Abstract

The purpose of this article is to investigate the effect of exports and inward foreign direct investment (FDI) on economic development in Greece, in the long and short run, from 1980 to 2013. This study applies the Ng-Perron and DF-GLS unit root tests to determine the level of integration as well as the autoregressive distributed lag (ARDL) method to identify the long-run relationship. Our analysis confirms the long-run relationship between inward FDI, exports and national income. Our results imply that any policy by the Greek Government aimed at boosting economic development through exports will have to be considered for the long run since Greek authorities cannot rely on exports in the short run. However, inward FDI appears more efficient than exports as far as boosting economic progress in the short run.