Export Spillovers to Chinese Firms: Evidence from Provincial Data

Multinational firms are important conduits of managerial skills, foreign market linkages, and technology. Foreign export spillovers associated with multinational firms have the potential to reduce entry costs for local exporting firms. This paper examines whether exports by multinational firms increase the probability of exporting by domestic Chinese firms. The findings from the Probit estimation highlight the varying relationships between multinational exports and local foreign entry based on the type of ownership. The results from separating foreign-invested enterprises into overseas Chinese companies and OECD-based multinational firms suggest that the export activity of the former does not increase the probability of exporting by local firms, whereas the latter positively influence the export decision of local firms, particularly under processing trade.     

Export spillovers and export performance in China

This paper examines the local export spillover effect on the individual decisions to start exporting (the extensive margin) and export volume (the intensive margin), using a unique dataset of Chinese export firms, at the product-level and by destination country. Based on a gravity-type equation estimated at firm-level, we find that export spillovers positively influence not only the decision of a nearby firm to start exporting, but also the volume of the exporting. Several methods are used to verify the robustness of these results. In addition, we find that the effect of export spillovers is stronger when it is product-destination-specific than that when it is either product or destination-specific alone, and also stronger than that is in general. Geographically, local export spillovers exhibit spatial decay in China: the effect is stronger for firms located in the same city than it is for firms outside the city. Small and multi-product firms are more likely to be influenced by the local export spillovers, and their impact is stronger for firms exporting complex goods and exporting to easy-entry countries. Moreover, the export spillovers from private firms are the strongest, followed by foreign-invested firms with the effect generated by state-owned firms ranking last.     

Spatial Spillovers from Foreign Direct Investment: Evidence from the Yangtze River Delta in China

This paper examines the spatial externality from foreign direct investment on domestic firms. Using Chinese firm‐level data for 2004, and after accounting for an endogeneity problem, we find that foreign firms generate a significantly positive spillover effect on the regional productivity of domestic firms in similar counties and industries. Estimating a spatial‐autoregressive model, we further show that such local spillovers could transmit to domestic firms in other counties and industries through interactions among domestic firms. However, these spatial multiplier effects decline with distance, thereby reducing the foreign direct investment spillover effects for domestic firms in distant locations.     

Are FDI spillovers regional? Firm-level evidence from China

This paper examines whether spillovers from FDI occur at the national or regional level, using firm-level census data for the Chinese manufacturing industry between 2000 and 2003. We find that FDI provides significant positive spillovers for the productivity of firms in the same industry, but these spillovers are likely to be regional; that is, domestic firms benefit more from the presence of foreign firms in the same sector within the same region. The backward and forward linkage effects of FDI are negative with significant regional disparity. The geographic distribution of FDI also influences spillovers, with an increase in FDI inflow to the top FDI recipient provinces increasing the forward linkage spillovers. Our empirical results also suggest that domestic firms differ significantly in the extent to which they benefit from FDI, though domestic firms with high absorptive capacity are more likely to benefit from FDI.     

Testing for horizontal and vertical foreign investment spillovers in China, 1998–2007

As with many developing countries, the Chinese government hopes that knowledge brought by multinationals will spill over to domestic industries and increase their productivity. In this paper, we show that foreign investment originating outside of Hong Kong, Macau, and Taiwan has positive effects on individual firm level productivity, while foreign investment from HKMT firms does not. We also test for both horizontal (within the same industry) and vertical (upstream or downstream) linkages from foreign investment. Using a manufacturing firm-level panel for 1998 through 2007, we find zero or weak positive horizontal externalities. However, our results show that foreign direct investment (FDI) has generated positive productivity spillovers to domestic firms via backward linkages (the contacts between foreign affiliates and their local suppliers in downstream sectors) as well as forward linkages (between foreign suppliers and their local buyers in the upstream sectors).     

Liberalisation, FDI, and productivity spillovers--an analysis of Indian manufacturing firms

The objective of the intensification of reforms in India's trade,technology and industry policies in 1991 was to make Indianindustry competitive. In the light of these attempted changes,the present paper tested two hypotheses, namely (a) whetherliberalisation has improved the productivity of local firms;and (b) whether the spillovers from technology transfer haveincreased in the liberal regime. To test these, techniques frompanel data and stochastic production frontier were employedon 487 firms belonging to 24 three-digit manufacturing industriesfor the period 1989–90 to 1996–97. The results showedthat after liberalisation, the productivity of Indian industry,especially the foreign owned firms, has improved. The econometricresults suggested that only ‘scientific’ non-FDIfirms have benefited from the liberalisation. For the ‘non-scientific’firms, the impact is found to be productivity depressing. Withrespect to spillovers, only those domestic firms, which investedin R&D to decode the spilled knowledge, could benefit.     

产业关联、技术差距与外商直接投资的技术溢出

本文运用非均衡面板数据的广义矩估计,从产业关联和技术差距的角度考察了外商直接投资对中国纺织业的技术溢出效应.经验分析结论表明,外商直接投资主要通过水平关联和后向关联对纺织业内资企业产生溢出效应;外商直接投资是否通过水平关联促进内资企业生产效率的改善还取决于内外资企业间的技术差距,只有当内外资企业技术差距小于门限值时,外...     

FDI研发溢出效应对内资企业劳动生产率影响研究——以广东机动车和电子业为例

本研究比较了FDI研发活动对广东本地机动车和电子企业劳动生产率的影响.在机动车业,FDI和本地组装企业对本地零件供应企业都具有垂直溢出效应;对于水平溢出效应,以销售额为权重的水平溢出效应使得本地内资企业劳动生产率提高,而零件供应业的FDI按照人力资本为权重的水平溢出效应并没有提高本地零件供应企业的劳动生产率,竞争者之间的水平溢出效应与存在互补关系双方的垂直溢出效应相比,相对较弱.对于电子业,垂直溢出效应较小,而无论是以销售额为权重还是以就业人员为权重,电子业的水平溢出效应都不显著.     

Productivity spillovers from foreign multinationals and trade protection: firm‐level analysis of Vietnamese manufacturing

This paper examines how the presence of foreign multinational enterprises (MNEs) affects productivity in domestic private firms in Vietnamese manufacturing in 2005–10. The paper also examines how import protection has affected these productivity spillovers and how spillovers from wholly foreign MNEs and joint ventures differ. The most consistent result suggests wholly foreign MNEs impart negative spillovers while joint ventures tend to generate positive spillovers. Theory and random effects estimates also indicate that import protection reduces local firm productivity and weakens the effect of spillovers from all MNEs; but this result is not obtained when a fixed effects estimator is used. Results are similar in samples of labour‐intensive industries, which include close to three fourths of all sample firms, but differ markedly for more capital‐intensive groups.     

Technology spillovers from Chinese outward direct investment: The case of Ethiopia

The present study uses firm survey data of 1033 manufacturing firms operating in Ethiopia in 2011 to examine the impact of Chinese outbound direct investment on the productivity of domestic firms. Particularly, we attempt to answer two questions. Firstly, are Chinese-owned (henceforth foreign) firms more productive than local ones? Secondly, does the presence of foreign firms generate technology spillovers on domestic firms operating in the same industry? Our empirical results show that foreign firms are more productive and that their presence has different spillover effects on the productivity of domestic firms. In particular, we find that domestic firms with higher absorptive capacity experience positive spillovers, while those with low absorptive capacity witness negative spillover. We also find that small firms and non-exporting firms benefit more from spillovers than do other types of domestic firms. In this study, instrumental variables are used to address the potential endogeneity between foreign firm presence and domestic firm productivity.     

Death of linkages in host countries? A firm‐level study on the channels of productivity spillovers in the Malaysian manufacturing sector

Productivity spillovers from multinational corporations (MNCs) to local firms have been an area of keen research interest in developing economics. Claims of positive spillovers in the form of technology transfers have been questionable, in part because of the many ambiguous conclusions obtained. The paper argues that the lack of focus in the mechanisms underpinning spillovers may be one of the reasons for the ambiguity. Using local input–output linkages as the mechanism for technology transfer, this study examines the presence and the enabling conditions for spillovers. Accounting for the variations in firms' characteristics, the findings show that skills‐oriented MNCs participating in international production networks transmit horizontal spillovers to local establishments. Vertical spillovers from MNCs are mostly relevant only to lower‐skilled establishments. For skilled and export‐oriented local establishments, technologies learned from producing for international production networks are more significant than forming linkages with MNCs in the domestic market.     

Knowledge spillovers from FDI in China: The role of educated labor in multinational enterprises

This paper employs a firm-level panel data set for a high-tech cluster in China to examine knowledge spillovers from multinational enterprises (MNEs) to domestic firms, focusing on the role of MNEs’ employment of educated workers. We find that knowledge of MNEs spills over to domestic firms in the same industry through MNEs’ employment of workers with graduate-level or overseas education. We also find that Japanese MNEs contribute less to knowledge spillovers than US MNEs. This is likely due to the fact that Japanese MNEs in China do not employ much educated labor.     

Knowledge spillovers from foreign direct investment in R&D: Evidence from Japanese firm-level data

This study uses firm-level panel data from the Japanese manufacturing industries and examines whether foreign direct investment generates intra-industry knowledge spillovers to domestic firms. The analysis found positive effects of R&D stocks of foreign firms on the productivity of domestic firms, while effects of capital stocks of foreign firms were absent, suggesting that knowledge of foreign firms spills over through their R&D activities, but not through their production activities. In addition, we found that the extent of spillovers from R&D stock of foreign firms is substantially larger than spillovers from R&D stock of domestic firms.     

An Economic Analysis of Audit and Nonaudit Services: The Trade‐off between Competition Crossovers and Knowledge Spillovers*

In this paper, I present a model in which both markets for audit services and nonaudit services (NAS) are oligopolistic. Accounting firms providing both audit services and NAS will employ oligopolistic competition in each of these markets. In addition to auditors' gaining “knowledge spillovers” from auditing to consulting or vice versa, oligopolistic competition in one market will influence the counterpart in the other market ‐ what I call “competition crossovers”. Although scope economies due to knowledge spillovers (for example, cost savings) are always beneficial to auditors, such benefits can entice accounting firms to adopt strategies (for example, price reductions) to compete aggressively in the audit market so that some, or all, firms become worse off. A trade‐off arises between these two economic forces in the two oligopolistic markets. Given the trade‐off between competition crossovers and knowledge spillovers, accounting firms may not reduce their audit prices, even though supplying NAS enables firms to decrease auditing costs — a nontrivial impact of oligopolistic competition in two markets on audit pricing. The empirical implication of my results is that because of competition‐crossover effects between the auditing and consulting service markets, finding empirical evidence for knowledge‐spillover benefits is likely to be difficult. Control variables for “audit‐market concentration” concerned with competition‐crossover effects and “auditor expertise” concerned with knowledge‐spillover benefits should be included in audit‐fee regressions to increase the power of empirical tests. With regard to policy implications, my analyses help explain the impact of the Sarbanes‐Oxley Act on “market segmentation” and, hence, the profitability of accounting firms.     

Trade, technology spillovers, and food production in China

Trade, Technology Spillovers, and Food Production in China. — This paper studies technology spillovers between China and other countries, international trade in inputs being the prime carrier of knowledge in agricultural production. Human capital characteristics and structural characteristics of the agricultural production sys-tems determine the local usability of foreign knowledge for Chinese farmers. The authors utilize a multi-region applied general equilibrium model to analyze Chinese opportunities to benefit from foreign technology improvements in grain production. It is shown that possible negative welfare effects of unilateral trade liberalization of China against North American imports of agricultural inputs may be more than compensated by productivity gains if technology spillovers are included.     

R&D spillovers and the case for industrial policy in an open economy

In this paper we consider the case for subsidies towards firmswhich generate R&D spillovers in open economies. We showthat in the presence of strategic behaviour by firms many expectedresults are overturned. Local R&D spillovers to other domesticfirms may justify an R&D tax rather than a subsidy; R&Dcooperation by local firms over-internalises the externalityand also justifies an R&D tax; and international spilloverswhich benefit foreign firms may justify a subsidy, even thoughthe government cares only about the profits of home firms.     

Efficiency spillovers from foreign direct investment in the EU periphery: A comparative study of Greece,Ireland, and Spain

Despite a growing number of empirical studies on efficiency spillovers arising from the presence of multinational firms for a number of countries, general conclusions on this issue have been inhibited by differences in the data sets and estimation techniques used across studies. In this paper we conduct a comparative empirical study for Greece, Ireland and Spain by creating comparable data sets and estimating identical models. Our results show evidence of spillovers in Ireland and Spain only, although these positive spillovers seem to depend on whether firms have the absorptive capacity to capture technological spillovers and the criteria used to classify them as foreign affiliates. JEL no. F23, O30     

Productivity Spillovers from FDI in China： Regional Differences and Threshold Effects

Economic theory posits numerous channels through which FDI might create positive spillovers for domestic firms. However, the results of empirical studies that have sought to document these spillovers have been mixed. One explanation for this variation is that the capacity of domestic firms to absorb spillovers might vary. In the present paper, we explore these issues in the case of China. ,4side from being one of the world＇s leading hosts offoreign direct investment, China makes for an interesting case study because its provinces vary greatly with respect to those factors most commonly held to influence absorptive capacity, such as the initial level of technology in domestic firms. This paper begins by empirically establishing that the spillovers from foreign direct investment do indeed vary across provinces. Threshold values for varioas factors that influence absorptive capacity factors are then estimated and it is found that conditions in many provinces presently fall short of these values. This provides an obvious focus of attention for China＇s policy-makers.     

The choice between an international joint venture and a wholly-owned subsidiary in a developing country under technology spillover effects

A general equilibriumm model of a foreign multinational enterprise's decisions on establishing a wholly-owned subsidiary or forming a joint venture is built on firm-specific knowledge and plant-specific knowledge when there are intraindustry and interindustry technology spillovers. The welfare effects of a host developing country under closed economies, unrestricted foreign direct investment, and the policy of minimum local ownership requirements are compared. A developing country's worry is confirmed: Introduction of competition from foreign firms may not improve the welfare of the host country. However, the minimum local ownership requirement is Pareto-superior to a closed economy.     

我国企业在应对技术性贸易壁垒中存在的问题与对策

我国企业在应对国外的技术性贸易壁垒时通常采用主动的跨越措施、坚决的反抗措施和积极的绕开措施，虽然我国企业在应对中取得了可喜的成绩，但还存在许多的不足或者缺陷，文章从六个方面探讨了企业的应对策略。