今天写了很多，大部分是下午写的，那段时间效率很高。总结一下就是，不要光看paper，最好是边写、边搜、边看。这样速度快。

The fundamental situations of investment in the countries of belt and road 

According to the data reported by the Ministry of Commerce of P.R. China (Ministry of Commerce of People’s Republic of China, 2018), Chinese investment in 59 countries covered by BRI totaled US$64.64bn in the past four years, growing by 6.9% annually. In 2017, the investment in B&R routes accounts for 12% of the overall outbound investment, up 3.5 percentage points from a year earlier. This is partly due to the sharp decrease in China’s total amount of outward direct investment (ODI) resulted from the curbs in capital outflows, but Thomson Reuters’s (2017) report believed that the growth trend would only continue to increase and accelerate in the future.

Taking a deep look at the components of investment, Chinese enterprises actively seek opportunities for investment mainly in three forms, merger, and acquisitions (M&A), Greenfield and construction projects. Thomson Reuters (2017) develops a report and index, inferring that Chinese acquisitions along B&R countries reached a record high in 2017. Du and Zhang (2018) notice that the Greenfield investment was growing at a relatively slower pace than M&As. The research confirmed that Chinese firms were shifting a portion from Greenfield to M&As after the BRI being proposed in order to respond faster to investment opportunities.

While Du and Zhang (2018) disentangle China’s outward direct investment into M&As and Greenfield investment, the construction projects should never be dismissed for its important role in advancing the comprehensive cross-border collaboration. Chinese firms, state-owned enterprises (SOEs) at large, have participated in 8,158 infrastructure construction projects throughout the B&R countries, investing US$126bn in solely 2016 (Zhou, 2018).

A boom in investment after the BRI (为什么关于BRI前后的paper我都找不到)

As entering the fifth year of the Belt and Road Initiative, the government, academia, investors and other stakeholders are eager to know whether the outward investment is growing or not facilitated by the framework. 

Against the results from modeling with time series data covering an early stage of the BRI, China’s overseas investment plunged by 29.4% in 2017. Lacking in evidence, the current literature fails to verify the sustainability of the BRI’s role in promoting ODI. For this reason, whether the policy shock is producing a temporary spike or has a more far-reaching influence on the growth of outward investment deserves further study. 

B&R countries are experiencing a burst of investment under the BRI

Many economists hold the belief that investments in developed regions are more profitable and less risky (Shen and Li, 2017). Despite efforts made to mitigate the risk by a series of measures, private firms insist on investing in Japan and U.S.A. 

Contradicting the long-established belief, findings of Kang et al (2018) revealed that the BRI has better stimulated China’s ODI in these related countries after the announcement in 2013 compared with other countries outside the BRI group, which is also consistent with the conclusion published by Liu et al. (2017) and Du and Zhang (2018).

Barry, Görg, and Strobl (2003) illustrate a tendency of investors to imitate each other’s location choice due to uncertainty, providing reasons behind the agglomeration of investment in such formerly less-favored areas. As a matter of fact, non-state-owned enterprises (non-SOEs) are typically willing to follow the instruction of the central government (Du and Wang, 2013; Kung and Ma, 2016), and increase investment in B&R areas.

What factors affect the companies to decide to choose one of the types of investment mode?

In earlier studies, Dubin (1976) discovered that U.S. firms tend to favor Greenfield investments if the firm size was large. With the integration of world economy, as mentioned by a number of economists (Zejan, 1990; Calderón et al, 2004; Du and Zhang, 2018), there is a marked change in FDI composition: investment taking the form of M&A grows much more rapidly than Greenfield investment. Calderón et al (2004) find that higher M&A is typically followed by higher Greenfield investment, while the reverse only holds for developing countries. Previous studies ranked the preference by multinationals using large samples (Raff, 2009; Kim, 2009). It is evident that a joint venture is preferred to M&A, and M&A preferred to Greenfield investment. In addition, Kim (2009) demonstrate that M&A is preferred by multinationals motivated by the preferential trade arrangement, while Greenfield investment is a more ideal FDI entry mode for the host country considering the social welfare in terms of capital formation and job creation. In order to induce the multinationals’ choice of Greenfield investment, the host governments provide such incentives that lower the firm’s marginal cost than the critical value.

All the above researches seem to seek explanations from the firms’ side. Limited literature shed lights on the attributes of host countries, not to mention a broader economic framework, i.e. the Belt and Road Initiative. What’s more, to the best of our knowledge, discussion on the choice between construction projects and other forms of investment is far from sufficient. 

What methodologies of past papers used?

Firstly, The most prevailing approach to capture the dynamics of the macro-economy in a specific year is the “Difference in Difference” (DID) model. For example, an event-study analysis with DID method is conducted by Salinas and Solé-Ollé (2018) to test the exogeneity assumption by looking at the outcome in the years before and after the implementation of a certain policy. They generate two dummy variables to distinguish short-term and long-term policy effect.

Meanwhile, researchers are all interested in if the investment behaviors are also sensitive to whether target countries are part of B&R. Both Liu (2017) and Du and Zhang (2018) separate target countries into B&R and Non-B&R groups, in order to compare the different effect of BRI on investments flowing into them. However, Kang et al (2018) argue that a sample selection bias occurs when conducting a simple DID model since the B&R and Non-B&R countries are not two randomly selected groups. Therefore, matching techniques should be adopted for the purpose of controlling the heterogeneity. 

Thirdly, to capture the determinants of decision among different entry modes, GilroyandLukas(2006) present a two-phase optimization model, where an optimal value to trigger a switch from export to Greenfield investment, or from export to M&A, can be estimated. Another useful approach to investigate the decision-making strategy of multinationals is the conditional logit model. Hilber and Voicu (2010) take choice-specific fixed effects into account in the research on location choice by exploiting with conditional logit model. Debaere et al (2010) also employ this model to present the spatial pattern of investment in South Korea. 

Reference: 略。因为我没有把它们stylized