IS GREENFIELD INVESTMENT GREENER FOR THE WELFARE OF LOWER-MIDDLE INCOME COUNTRIES? MARKET BASED EMPIRICAL ANALYSIS WITH GMM APPROACH

Globalization is considered as the catalyst for the progress of economic activities and economic development of lower-middle-income countries. Greenfield investment not only promotes welfare but also helps in the health and education sector of these countries. This study examined thirty-four (34) sampled countries of the lower-middle-income group from different regions for a time span of 1998-2017. Im, Pesaran and Shin (2003) test is applied for testing panel unit root and one step system GMM technique is applied for the complete data analysis. The results of the study concluded that greenfield investment has increased economic growth and helped to push the welfare activities of sampled countries. Besides the increase in economic growth and welfare, greenfield investment also brings improvement in the health and education sectors through the transfer of new and advanced technologies from the developed nation firms to the host countries. Therefore, lower-middleincome countries must approve soft and friendly economic and business policies for the attraction of foreign investors from abroad. Such policies will help in promoting and increasing economic activities and economic development of sampled countries.


INTRODUCTION
Foreign Direct Investment is considered as the engine for the economic growth of developing countries. Developing countries are divided into different income categories on the basis of income criteria by the World Bank. In the lower-middle income countries', economies are very open to international market for investment. The increasing consumption makes these countries attractive and interesting market for international investors for investment (Azam, 2019;Azam, & Ahmed, 2015). Lower-middle income countries mostly depend upon the foreign investment especially Greenfield Investment (GF) which is one of the modes of foreign direct investment (Raza et al., 2021a). In terms of the economy, greenfield investment creates a number of positive changes: additional potential capacity, new jobs, latest technology, and new facilities.
In developing countries, especially lower-middle income countries, the share of greenfield investment is rising. This is because of the lack of funds that a government of lower-middle income countries face deprivation, however greenfield investment proves to be a blessing that endorse economic activities and impel the economic progression in these countries (Harms & Meon, 2011).
Whether a corporation decides to invest in a greenfield project is determined by a number of factors, including investment size, market knowledge, present and projected market growth.
There is a general consensus that greenfield investments have a greater impact on economic growth when the foreign investors takeover local firms through mergers or acquisitions.
Greenfield investment has a longer-lasting impact because of the commitment required (Stepanok, 2015). To make them more appealing, greenfield investment not only increases production capacity and create jobs, but also heightens competition by increasing the number of market suppliers (Calderón, Loayza & Servén, 2004). Due to the fact that greenfield investment increases the economy's production, it increases demand for the labour, resulting in higher pay for newly qualified labours. Greenfield investments can be thought of as several types of investment strategies with varying amounts of local resource deployment, adaptability, and market-specific transaction costs (Kim, 2009).
In greenfield investment, a corporation ploughs and prepares an entire green field before starting a new venture. There are no existing facilities or land in a greenfield venture; everything is built from scratch. Investors have complete control over facilities. An expansion strategy known as greenfield investment involves establishing up a new business, hiring local staff and adapting to the local institutional framework (Alon et al., 2020). Investors prefer to invest in greenfield projects in countries with strong ties to their investors, which provide them full control and protection over their investments. As the name implies, greenfield investment is fundamentally different from other types of investments since investors bring their own technology, finance, and other intellectual property rights (Zhuang, 2017). One option for firms looking to internalize their foreign activities is the creation of a new wholly owned subsidiary.
Greenfield investment approach involves forming a start-up company, hiring, and training new staff, sending expatriates, and progressively growing the firm using local institutions' knowledge (Zhuang & Griffith, 2013).
The research question is whether any relationship among greenfield investment and economic growth, welfare, health, and education persist. This paper is different from previous studies in many aspects as there is a gap in literature to know about the impact of greenfield investment on health, education, economic growth, and welfare of lower-middle income countries. Before this study, only the greenfield investment nexus with economic growth of developing countries has been assessed in literature. This study used the original data of greenfield investment method of Calderon et al., (2004) while other studies have used greenfield projects data. This study has also used some other foreign capital inflows like remittances and foreign aid to build in-depth analysis and has recommended policies for future strategies. The main objectives of this study are as follows:  Moon et al. (2003) conducted the first study on FDI and its mode and found a favorable association between Brownfield Investment (BF) and economic growth for the tested nations.

LITERATURE REVIEW
The author employs the diamond model to argue that the brownfield investment has boosted economic growth in those countries. The study found that corruption has a substantial favorable influence on greenfield investment in developing countries, while it has a significant detrimental impact in industrialized countries. Raza et al. (2020a) used the ARDL technique to examine time series data from 1990 to 2018 in Pakistan and discovered that GF is effective at increasing individual income and improving the health of the host nation's population. Greenfield investment also helps in the well-being of a host nation (Luu, 2016). In another study by Raza et al. (2020b), GMM technique was used to show the position of African developing countries between 1998 and 2017. According to the findings of the study, greenfield investment enhanced the economic growth and development of African host developing countries. Greenfield investment was also found beneficial to individual economies and positively impacted the health situations. Raza et al. (2021b) also reported similar results for a sample of low-income nations using a one-step system GMM estimation technique.

METHODOLOGY
For this study, a sample of 34 lower-middle income developing nations was chosen from 1998 to 2017. This time period was chosen due to the availability of data. During this time period, there has been a tremendous inflow of greenfield investments as well as a rapid expansion in globalization process was evidenced in the lower-middle income developing countries. The proxies for each of the variable like greenfield investment is gf, remittances as rt, foreign aid as fa, trade as tr, population as po, inflation as in, welfare as wf, education as en, health as hl and economic growth as eg. The most popular data sources from which the data is taken are World Development Indicators (WDI, 2020); United Nations Development Program (UNDP, 2020); and United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD, 2017;.
This study employed a multivariate regression model, which has already been used in investigations and may be written as: As the first to incorporate capital into an economic growth model, the Harrod-Domar theory (Harrod, 1939;Domar, 1946) was used in this research, which was later adopted by Lehnert et al. (2013) and Bayar (2017). Thus, rearranging the equation (1) As a result of equation (2), all subsequent equations, which have been employed in prior investigations, were created. In this study, the final equation utilized to assess each dependent variable is give below: This means that the equation (3) is the final panel data model for economic growth utilized in the investigations of Lehnert et al. (2013) and Bayar (2017).
Equation (4) is the final panel data model for health. The health life index model is based on a study conducted by (Barro, 1991) and was used in a study conducted by (Lehnert et al, 2013).
Equation (5) is the final panel data model for education. In the (Lehnert et al., 2013) analysis, the educational index model is used.
Equation (6) is the final model for welfare and is used in studies of (Sharma & Gani, 2004) and (Lehnert et al, 2013).   With regard to education, health, welfare and economic growth, inflation has a weakly negative association. At the end of the day, welfare indicates a favorable association with health, education, and economic growth.     Table 4 shows that the theoretically constant term is statistically negligible and negative, while the lag of economic growth is statistically significant and positively correlated. As a result of this study, Greenfield investment was determined to have a large and favorable impact on the economic condition of lower middle income developing countries. The same findings were also found by Harms and Meon (2013). No one can overlook the importance of remittances in the economic growth of poor countries. This study confirms that remittances have a favorable impact on economic growth. A similar conclusion was reached by Gosh Dastidar (2017), who asserted that developing countries can benefit economically by sending more money back home by being more accessible to the rest of the globe. As a consequence of this analysis, foreign aid was shown to be statistically inconsequential and negative (2016). Statistics show that trade is a statistically significant and negative factor, but population and inflation are positive factors in relation to economic development (Raza et al., 2021b).

RESULTS AND DISCUSSION
Researchers found that Greenfield investment had a statistically significant and favorable impact on education, and the same was found by researchers Miningou and Tapsoba (2017) in their respective research study. Remittances also help to the education of children in remittance-receiving families, according to the study. This analysis concludes that foreign aid is statistically insignificant and detrimental, and Asiedu and Nandwa (2007) concluded the same. Government support for primary and secondary education had an adverse impact.
Statistically important in terms of trade, population, and inflation, but the former is positive while the latter is negative. According to this study, greenfield investment has the potential to improve the quality of life for individuals. Zhunio et al. (2012) found that remittances on health expenditures decreased infant mortality and enhanced life expectancy. The results of this study show that foreign aid is useless in enhancing health. Similarly, Williamson's (2008) research indicated that aid was unsuccessful. There's no correlation between trade and population, which is statistically significant, but plays a negative effect, and inflation, which plays a positive function.
In this study, Greenfield investment had a statistically significant and favorable relationship with the welfare of the participants. Results are in line with those of Sharma and Gani (2004), who concluded that FDI increases wellbeing in lower middle-income developing nations. It has been shown that remittances have a good and considerable impact on people's well-being.
Remittances are the best way to increase a society's welfare, according to Naeem and Arzu's (2017) research. According to Kumler's analysis (2007), foreign aid has a negligible and negative impact on the economic development of lower-middle income countries. Population, trade, and inflation all have major negative effects on a society's welfare.

CONCLUSION
This study aims to find the impact of greenfield investment on economic development and economic growth of lower-middle income countries. The thirty-four (34) sampled countries with time period of 1998 to 2017 and using GMM technique analyzed that greenfield has positively influence on welfare of these countries. health, education, and per capita income has increased with the foreign investment in the form of greenfield investment and other controlled variables like remittances has also shown improvement in the living standard and quality education of the remittance receiving families. Foreign aid usually has negative influence on the economic growth and welfare of the host countries, this might be due to bad governance or corruption. Inflation and population have also negatively affected while trade has positive impact on the health, education, and welfare. From the analysis, it is observed that Greenfield investment is better for the economic activities that further boost economic development.
Therefore, it is recommended that these countries must make friendly, business and investment policies to accommodate foreign investors. By adopting such policies, the foreign investors will bring more and more Greenfield investment that will further generate employment with latest technologies. These technologies will be used in high quality health facilities and high education sector bringing improvement in these two sectors.