The role of corporate governance in attracting foreign direct investment study the case of Iraq

Corporate governance is defined as setting the basic regulations for work and applying systems in business, thus attracting investments, organizing businesses, and achieving sustainable economic development. Several studies have been conducted to examine the factors affecting the foreign direct investment in Arab countries. However, most of them did not take into account the impact of corporate governance on foreign investment in Iraq. Therefore, this study attempts to determine whether corporate governance has a role in attracting foreign investments in Iraq based on several important variables such as gross domestic product, inflation, and the index of transparency and economic freedom in Iraq. This study relied on the ARDL model to study the long- and short-term relationship between corporate governance and foreign direct investment, where the level of stability of the study variables was studied first, and then the most appropriate degree of delay was determined for the study. The relationship between the variables and the long- and short-term relationship was studied according to the equations of the model. The study basically concluded that that there is a positive and significant impact of gross domestic product (GDP), and economic freedom (LE) on the FDI in the long run. We can also notice that there is a negative but not signtificant impact if Inflation, and Transparency International Corruption Perception Index on the FDI in the long run. We note by studying the short-term relationship between the variables of the study that all corporate governance variables affect foreign direct investment in Iraq in the short term, as the results have proven that Gross domestic product (GDP), has a positive and significant impact on the foreign direct investment, but Index of economic freedom (LE) variable affect Positively, but not significantly on the foreign direct investment in the short run.