Labor Skills and Foreign Direct Investment in a Dynamic Economy: Estimating the Knowledge-Capital Model for Singapore

In this paper we analyze changes in the inbound and outbound investment between Singapore and a sample of industrialized and developing countries. The nature of Singapore's two-way investment with the industrialized nations has shifted into skill-seeking activities over the period, while Singapore's investments in developing countries have increased sharply and become concentrated in labor-seeking activities. Over the 1984-2003 period, as host Singapore became skill abundant relative to parent industrialized countries, average inbound investment stocks from these countries increased by US$ 24.8 billion annually, while the corresponding figure for outbound stocks to host developing countries was US$ 9.5 billion.