Faculty Fellow Jeff Bergstrand, a professor in the Department of Finance in the University of Notre Dame's Mendoza College of Business, delivered the lead presentation in the second US International Trade Commission (ITC) Trade-Policy Workshop, on July 9, 2021. The topic of the workshop was "Modeling Foreigh Direct Investment."
US free trade agreements – such as the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA) – are increasingly being extended to cover foreign direct investment flows between countries. Bergstrand addressed the heterogeneity in modeling foreign direct investment (FDI) because FDI covers a wide array of activities, varying from financial capital flows to production of foreign affiliates to joint ventures and other measures. He discussed current and past theoretical frameworks for modeling FDI, econometric specifications to explain FDI volumes, and future methodological approaches to understand the determinants of FDI activity and potentially the modeling of the impact of economic integration agreements on such activity.