Welfare Enhancing Capital Imports

Abstract

This paper provides a model to consider the conditions under which an acceptance of foreign capital is welfare enhancing in a multi-commodity multi-factor framework. Contrary to the pessimistic conventional wisdom of capital imports and welfare, we provide a justification for the acceptance of foreign capital and the diversification of industrial structure in developing countries. A sufficient condition for the acceptance of foreign capital to be welfare enhancing is that all domestic factors move into the new export sector in equal proportion to the endowments of factors.