The impact of Chinese FDI in Africa: evidence from Ethiopia

We exploit exogenous variation in China’s export taxes to investigate the impact of Chinese foreign direct investment (FDI) in Ethiopia. Higher sector-specific export taxes in China lead to more Chinese FDI in Ethiopian districts specialized in those sectors and generate highly heterogeneous effects. Domestic firms competing with Chinese FDI reduce their sales, investment, inputs and prices, while firms in upstream and downstream sectors expand. We build a 20-year district panel of night lights and observe that Chinese FDI leads to no instantaneous impact on local growth, but significant and persistently positive effects after 6-12 years.