A bibliometric analysis on foreign direct investment

Abstract

Foreign direct investment is defined as expanding a business beyond one’s domestic country, and is a continuously growing topic that has gained the attention of numerous scholars all around the world. This interest has developed as a result of the great economic and social impact FDI leaves in a society. The purpose of this paper is to present a bibliometric review on this topic including all papers published until 2020 as there is a need to have a comprehensive analysis on all literature that will help in identifying the literature gap and guide future researchers when conducting their research. The bibliometric analysis methodology was conducted on 4,525 articles between 1942 and 2020 on the subject of FDI. The data was extracted only from Scopus as we wanted to focus our attention on the leading worldwide used citation database that includes modern material. The top authors, countries, organisations, and documents were also identified.

Keywords: Capital flow, Economic growth, Foreign direct investment, Globalization, Multinational enterprises