Foreign Direct Investment and Natural Resources in Gulf Cooperation council countries: the Devil is in the Details

FDI is widely considered as an important channel of economic growth and poverty reduction, but recent literature have noted that resource-rich countries have attracted FDI less than resource-poor countries also Multinational firms in resource abundant countries concentrate their investment on resource sector such as oil. This paper attempts to investigate the impact of natural resource on FDI inflows in oil dependent countries (Gulf Co-operation Council) between 1980 and 2013 using panel data Random effect. The main finds of this study is that natural resources deter the FDI inflows to this area, this result reflects the crowding out effect in terms of resources curse. The results show that one unit increase in inflation rate generates 0.005 decrease in foreign capitals. Correlation (FDI/GDP, Oil revenues/GDP) = - 0.38. Further, trade openness plays a vital role to attract FDI to GCC countries