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Foreign investment can mitigate the foreign exchange constraint of developing countries. It can also influence the economy's international competitiveness through appreciating or depreciating exchange rates. The exchange rate impact of domestic investment is also not straightforward and depends on some critical factors. These issues of investment often pose a policy dilemma. Against this backdrop, this paper assesses the relative impacts of foreign direct investment (FDI), domestic investment (DI), and external debt on India's real effective exchange rate and the rupee/dollar real rate for the liberalized regime for trade, investment, and exchange rates. The autoregressive distributed lag bounds testing approach to cointegration, followed by its error correction representation, finds that real exchange rate variations are associated with FDI, debt, DI, and some control variables. FDI and debt depreciate real exchange rates, indicating that these have not exacerbated the economy's international competitiveness. However, DI causes real appreciation. These findings are consistent across estimations involving alternative specifications of control variables. Offsetting impacts of FDI and DI is an interesting finding. This can stabilize the exchange rates by undermining appreciating or depreciating exchange rate trends. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Trade and investment are crucial drivers of economic growth. Successful execution of trade and investment policy can elevate a developing country to a sustained growth path and make it self‐reliant. Bangladesh implemented a trade liberalization policy in the 1980s, deviating much from its conservative trade policy. This article assesses the impacts of trade, investment in physical as well as human capital, and a few trade policy variables on income surge for the liberalized regime. The econometric analysis finds that export, import, and domestic investment stimulate income. The impact of foreign investment is not conducive. Public spending on education also contributes to the income surge. Among the policy variables, trade openness and currency depreciation produce a beneficial impact. Population growth retards economic growth. The baseline results hold in the estimations involving several specifications of variables and testified as robust. The article views that a comprehensive approach to trade and investment policy would ensure the comparative advantage of trade and the well‐being of Bangladesh. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]