Foreign Direct Investment

Economics

Investment made by a firm or individual in one country into business interests in another country.

Sources

1. OECD — Measuring foreign direct investment oecd.org accessed 23 September 2026

No authority defines FDI for all purposes, but one sets the measurement standard, and for a term whose whole life is statistical that comes to much the same thing. The OECD describes FDI as lying “at the heart of globalisation”, serving “as an important conduit for the transfer of capital, goods, services, and information across economies”, and states its own role plainly: it “provides operational guidelines on how FDI activity should be measured and sets global standards for collecting FDI statistics”, as well as disseminating comparable FDI data. The instrument behind that is the OECD Benchmark Definition of Foreign Direct Investment. The practical consequence is that an FDI figure is only meaningful alongside the standard it was compiled under — the page cited is the OECD’s topic overview and states the OECD’s standard-setting role rather than reproducing the Benchmark Definition itself.

What this source settles. Where a statute or a directive is quoted, that instrument governs within its own jurisdiction and its later amendments prevail over any summary. Where a body describes itself, the page is authoritative for what the body is and does, and not for how well it does it. Where a case study is cited, it records one dispute at one time and is evidence of the problem rather than of the current legal position.

Related terms

• Balance of Payments
• Credit Rating
• Current Account Deficit
• EURIBOR
• Exchange Rate
• Forward Contract

From the AJG lexicon archive (July 2026).