Foreign Capital and Urban Congestion in Emerging Markets

Traditional literature emphasizes the role of foreign capital, especially foreign direct investment (FDI) in explaining the high growth rates that many emerging economies have enjoyed during 1990s and 2000s. The present paper accepts this conventional wisdom but argues that the FDI has also created problems of urban sprawl and congestion that would not be so intense if economic development had primarily come from domestic sources. This is because the FDI is typically concentrated in urban areas that abound in manufacturing and it neglects the rural areas where agriculture predominates. The paper suggests that a small tax on foreign capital tends to mitigate the side effects of foreign investment.