The nexus between institutional quality and foreign direct investments (FDI) in South Asia: Dynamic heterogeneous panel approach

South Asia is one of the world's fastest growing regions, averaging 6.7 percent annual increases in real GDP over the past decade. However, South Asia's FDI inflows as a share of GDP are the lowest of all developing regions, averaging less than 2 percent in 2000-11(World Bank, 2013). Institutional quality is one of the factors that determine the volume of FDI inflow in any country. This study covers the data of three sampled countries of South Asia provided by the World Bank for the period 2003-2014. By using both static and dynamic models, this study reveals that regulatory quality and the political stability have significantly positive impact on the FDI inflow into each of the three countries. For Robustness, this study also employs dynamic heterogeneous panel approaches like Pool Mean Group (PMG) and found that institutional quality factors are significantly relevant to the FDI. As a policy implication, the regression results indicate that during the process of reform, the relation between FDI and institutional quality warrants a certain amount of attention.