International Trade, FDI, and Sustainable Development

Dear Colleagues,

The pursuit of sustainable development has gained unprecedented global momentum since the UN has adopted a set of 17 sustainable development goals in September 2015. The agenda is to put in place appropriate policies, systems and institutions to steer the global economy onto a sustainable trajectory of growth and development. This will mean major economic, social and environmental transformation of emerging economies in particular, requiring massive investment in radical technological transformations and capacity building for which the support of the private sector is indispensable. An increasingly growing component of private investment is FDI that has grown astronomically, becoming the largest source of external finance for developing countries. There is growing evidence that this upsurge in FDI flows has reinforced global trade as well.

By virtue of their size, technological prowess, internalized markets for skills, capital, technology and brands, and mutually reinforcing relationship with international trade, FDI offers emerging economies access to updated technologies, capital and investible resources and international markets to promote growth. However, its role in sustainable development is not clearly established. With SDGs entering into the global lexicon, investors are increasingly directing their focus and concerted efforts towards socially responsible practices, and environment and social governance strategies (ESG) under pressures from  regulators, governments, non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and social media, putting the ESG reputation of firms at the centre of business strategies. According to the biennial Global Sustainable Investment Alliance report, asset flows into investment strategies that consider ESG factors grew to USD 30.7 trillion in 2018, a 34% increase from 2016. In 2020, it stood at USD 35.3 trillion, equating to 36% of all professionally managed assets across the developed regions of the United States, Canada, Japan, Australasia and Europe.

However, there is evidence that developed market-headquartered MNEs behave more irresponsibly in emerging markets than they do at home. There is a view that FDI flows in emerging markets may be associated with technologies that are not appropriate and can destroy jobs, crowd-out domestic investments through M&As and perpetuate inequalities alongside bringing polluting industries in the developing host countries. Thus, critical questions include:

• How is sustainable development related to the flow and stock of FDI and trade in emerging economies?
• What are the country- and firm-level determinants of investment and trade in socially responsible behaviour or ESG strategies by foreign investors? Does ownership matter? Do institutions matter?
• What may be the impact of environmental, social and governance (ESG) reputations on firms’ performance?
• How have international trade and FDI impacted the key areas of Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) of (i) green innovations, (ii) job quality and skills, (iii) gender equality, (iv) sustainable business practices and (v) sustainable consumption patterns.
• How responsible—and how successful—are foreign investors in cross-border environmental management and the transfer of environmentally sound technologies?
• What lessons can we learn from the success stories and failures of foreign investors?
• What can policy makers do to accentuate the positive contribution of TNCs and reduce their negative effects? Are there success stories or failures? If yes, what lessons are learned from them?

This Special Issue of Businesses invites researchers and academics to submit their work addressing the above questions. Submitted papers can be comparative institutional analyses, theoretical contributions, empirical work or case studies, among others.

I look forward to receiving your contributions.

Prof. Dr. Aradhna Aggarwal
Guest Editor

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Businesses is an international peer-reviewed open access quarterly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 1000 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

• sustainable development
• foreign direct investment (FDI)
• international trade
• multinational enterprises (MNEs)
• environmental, social and corporate governance (ESG) strategies
• decent and productive jobs
• gender equality