Advances in Economics and Business 5(5): 256-264, 2017 http://www.hrpub.org DOI: 10.13189/aeb.2017.050503 "Emerging" through Foreign Investment: Investment Development Path Estimation of "MINT" Economies Emine Beyza Satoglu Management and Global Business Department, Rutgers Business School, Rutgers University, USA Copyright©2017 by authors, all rights reserved. Authors agree that this article remains permanently open access under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License 4.0 International License Abstract This article aims to analyze the relationship between the foreign investment, both inward and outward, and the development levels of the emerging market economies: Mexico, Indonesia, Nigeria and Turkey (MINT). Dunning's IDP (Investment Development Path) theory has been used as the basis for empirical analysis covering the recent globalization era: 1990-2013. The fixed effects longitudinal data analysis for the four countries demonstrated that MINT economies are at the 2 nd stage of IDP. At the same time, increasing level of inward FDI flows into these countries prove the potential of these economies to be represented as "second generation of fast growing developing countries" after the BRICS. Thus, this study aims to improve our understanding on the emerging economies by focusing on a new group (MINT) and it demonstrates the interaction of inward/outward FDI and the GDP growth in that group of countries. Keywords Investment Development Path, Outward/Inward Foreign Direct Investment, Emerging Economies, MINT 1. Introduction The transformations after the Second World War toward liberalization, deregulation and market system gave rise to the internationalization of the firms, but nothing could be more significant for the globalization of markets than the advances in communication, transportation and technologies boosted in the last two decades. In recent globalization era, the number of the countries and regions benefiting from the advantages of internationalization has expanded sharply. As a result, the level of the Foreign Direct Investment has reached very high levels in all around the world both in developed and developing countries. According to UNCTAD reports [1], global FDI flows have risen to $1.76 trillion in 2015. Similarly, the share of FDI flows into developing countries has reached 45% of global inflows that emphasizes the striking importance of the emerging economies for hosting FDI in recent world. On the other hand FDI outflows from developing countries, which has also reached a record level in 2014, is continued to expand in 2015. In 2015, 28% of global FDI outflows have been invested by the developing countries, while it was only 12% at the beginning of the 2000s. [1] Under the lights of the trends in foreign investment levels, exploring the rise of the share of the developing countries within the total FDI flows has become a new research interest, particularly in the IB field. However, to date, research on the developing countries has still been scarce. The studies that have already been carried out are often of limited to BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa) countries or focus on limited time horizon. Similarly, while several studies analyzes the motivations of FDI inflows to developing countries, the key role of both outward and inward investment for the development of the late-industrializer "emerging” economies has not yet well understood. In this regard, the main purpose of this study is to expand our understanding on the emerging economies' development story through an extended time span that would enable us to explore the patterns of development in an interdependent world during the entire years after the globalization of markets in the 1990s. In addition, in this study an unvisited country group that will possibly be accepted as 'the second generation giants of emerging economies' is examined in order to discuss homogeneity or heterogeneity across emerging economies. 1.1. MINT Economies In the history of international business, four waves of MNEs are identified. [2] The first generation of the Multinational Enterprises is the pre-WWI European colonial period that several European multinationals appeared on the global stage. After the WWII, American multinationals dominated the global business networks with a share of 55% of the world FDI stock. The late 1980s and 1990s Japanese firms expanded in Asia, Europe and the United States.