A Dynamic Decision Model of SMEs' FDI

Many scholars generally believe that small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in comparison to large firms are at a disadvantage in foreign direct investment (FDI). However, new evidence suggests that SMEs also play an important role in FDI. Why do they undertake risk in other countries? We are interested in what factors significantly motivate them to go abroad. Taiwan's SMEs play a vital role in her economic development and outward FDI, and this study therefore focuses on the outward FDI of Taiwan's SMEs. We apply the hazard rate approach to perform an empirical analysis, taking into consideration the conditional probability of the element of time. Among SMEs, the lower the degree of "capital intensities," the larger the "firm sizes," the higher the "export ratios," or the larger the level of "R&;D intensities" are, the greater the intention will be to undergo FDI. The major factors motivating Taiwanese SMEs to conduct FDI in recent years are "utilizing local labor," "expanding markets," and "following major clients."

     

The Politics of Self–Restraint: FDI Subsidies and Japanese Mercantilism

Home governments seek to enhance the international competitiveness of private enterprises not only through export credit, but also through preferential loans for foreign direct investment (FDI). Indeed, contrary to the common image of nation‐states resenting their loss of jurisdiction over the mobile transnational corporation, some governments have become active financiers of multinational investment to serve their industrial policy goals. The uneven use by industrialized states of preferential credit to further MNC expansion challenges the current characterization of home government policy as both homogenous and ineffective for the task of industrial promotion. The world's most active state in FDI finance, Japan, has enjoyed an inordinate degree of freedom to engage in subsidization of MNC investment since no international regime on FDI credit, similar to the OECD arrangement on government export finance, exists. Moreover, Japanese labor has not challenged the legitimacy of state FDI finance. In the absence of international or societal constraints on soft FDI credit, Japanese self‐restraint in FDI subsidization is better explained by the internal budgetary makeup of government financial institutions with a mandate to finance FDI. Treasury bureaucrats concerned with healthy public finances and politicians eager to reward core support groups, have repeatedly competed for control over the budgetary strings on soft FDI finance. This political contest is far from over. This paper, therefore, highlights the political agency behind rules of financial discipline that have so far inhibited Japanese rent‐seeking international economic behavior.     

Linking inward/outward FDI and exploitation/exploration strategies: Development of a framework for SMEs

The purpose of this paper is to examine the relationships between exploitation/exploration strategy and foreign direct investment (FDI) involving small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). Drawing on qualitative data collected from 45 FDI projects reported by 38 SMEs in a small open economy (SMOPEC), we develop an empirically grounded framework and research propositions that suggest inward FDI (into the SME) is associated with exploration driven by a strategic asset-seeking motive, and outward FDI (by the SME) is associated with exploitation driven by market and efficiency-seeking motives. Further, for the SMEs in this study, ambidextrous exploration and exploitation appear complementary and co-occur either simultaneously through an inward FDI project, or sequentially through separate inward and outward FDI projects, respectively. Our findings, however, reveal a lack of clear sequencing between inward and outward FDI, in contrast to previous research that has conceptualised inward FDI as a strategic means to achieve outward FDI. Implications for theory, practice and policy are discussed.     

Pro-market institutions and outward FDI of emerging market firms: An institutional arbitrage logic

We offer new theory and evidence regarding the effects of pro-market institutions on outward foreign direct investment (FDI) of emerging market firms (EMFs). Drawing on the logic of institutional arbitrage, we integrate the escapism and exploitation mechanisms of EMF internationalization into a unified theoretical context. We propose an inverted U-shaped relationship between host market-supporting institutions (MSI) and the investment scale of an EMF’s FDI project in the country, showing an escape-driven upward slope for low-to-medium MSI levels and an exploitation-driven downward slope for medium-to-high MSI levels. We supplement this main argument with two boundary conditions: the alleviating effect of home market liberalization (HML) and the strengthening effect of home government subsidies (HGS), demonstrating the coexistence and variation of pro- and anti- market institutions in an emerging market. Using information on 1,450 FDI projects conducted by 288 Chinese listed firms in 116 host countries, we obtain supportive evidence for the predicted relationships between the three institutional forces. This study enriches the literatures on institutional arbitrage and pro-market institutions with evidence from EMFs.     

Small and medium-sized transnational corporations: Trends and patterns of foreign direct investment

This paper provides an analysis of small and medium-sized transnational corporations (TNCs). Statistical evidence is provided on trends and patterns of foreign direct investment (FDI) by small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). There are virtually no countries for which consistent and systematic FDI data are available by firm size, but data complied by or made available to the author for the UNCTAD Programme on Transnational Corporations allow an analysis of broad characteristics, trends and patterns.FDI by SMEs is more concentrated in developed countries than that by large TNCs. However, small and medium-sized TNCs, especially those from Japan, are increasingly investing in developing countries. Although absolute size of FDI is still small, SMEs account for a large share in terms of the number of investment cases and the number of parent firms. South and East Asia became the primary host region of small and medium-sized TNCs during the 1980s and early 1990s. The industrial distribution of FDI by SMEs in developing countries is quite wide, but concentrated in electrical goods, chemicals, textiles and some services industries. SMEs also engage in non-equity investments.Transnational Corporations Affairs Officer United Nations Conference on Trade and Development Geneva, SwitzerlandThe author is grateful for advice and comments by Hafiz Mirza     

Regional economic integration and multinational firm strategies

This paper analyzes the effects of regional economic integrations on investment patterns among multinational firms. We develop a model in which heterogeneous firms decide on the optimal foreign direct investment (FDI) strategies for serving trade-integrated regions consisting of asymmetric countries: developed and developing nations. Following reduced trade costs within the trade-integrated region, our model shows that integrating into a regional economic zone affects firms with relatively low productivity levels to enter developing nation within the region via complex FDI – a firm activity of engaging in multiple types of FDI. Specifically, we show that depending on the size of the region respective to the home country, complex FDI involves different investment patterns. Using Korean firm- and plant-level data, we specify a binary choice model to link firms’ choice of FDI strategies with their productivity levels and trade-integrated regions. Our empirical results are consistent with the theoretical implications.     

The Role of Location as a Selection Criterion in FDI: The Case of SMEs in Greece

The study examines the internationalization of Greek SMEs in Western Europe and the Balkan area, focusing on the role of location as a selection criterion in their FDI decisions. Data aimed at capturing SMEs’ perceptions with regard to incentives affecting their FDI based on location criteria. We find that location plays a significant role with regard to the benefits that firms gain, highlighting OLI paradigm's theoretical relevance in the examination of FDI, while presenting internationalization trends in the global environment. Findings further contribute to the adaption of effective practices to enhance firms’ competitiveness through more rational and targeted investment decisions.     

The limits of firm-level globalization: Revisiting the FSA/CSA matrix

Multinational enterprises (MNEs) engaging in foreign direct investment (FDI) need advantages allowing them to offset the liability of foreignness in host countries. This liability of foreignness gives rise to additional operational costs related to economic, institutional, and cultural differences between home and host countries. MNEs therefore need to own or control firm-specific advantages (FSAs) that, along with country-specific advantages (CSAs) and internalization advantages, affect international business transactions. In this paper, we revise Rugman’s classic FSA/CSA matrix to better reflect how firms bundle their assets with CSAs. We further contribute to the prior debate on the linkages between the global factory paradigm and internalization theory by empirically evaluating the validity of a key proposition associated with the global factory, namely that FDI becomes relatively less important as a building block of the modern MNE. We do so using data on FDI and cross-border mergers and acquisitions, a major component of FDI.     

Foreign Direct Investment in China: Reward or Remedy?

This paper tests the significance of FDI as a way to alleviate credit constraints. Incoming foreign investment provides additional sources of capital. Specifically in the Chinese case, enterprises may look for foreign investors, being constrained in their activity due to distortions in the state‐dominated system. First, the Chinese financial system allocates resources to the least efficient firms – state‐owned enterprises – while denying the same resources to Chinese private enterprises, forcing them to look for a foreign investor. Second, the inefficient system of state investment planning leads to mismanagement of public enterprises, increasing ‘insolvency‐induced FDI’. We propose to analyse determinants of FDI in Chinese provinces to test the above hypotheses. We control for traditional determinants of FDI such as market access, labour costs, productivity, infrastructure, reform advances and banking sector size in order to assess the impact of inter‐provincial heterogeneity in terms of the access that private enterprises have to credit and the distortive management in state‐owned firms.     

The Provision of Finance to Innovation: A Survey Conducted among Italian Technology-based Small Firms

Financial constraints to the development of innovation are often considered one of the main impediments to high-technology firms seeking to expand and grow. In particular this is the case of small and medium size high-tech firms. In the U.S. and the U.K. a variety of sources of finance are available to the start-ups of innovative firms; in the other European countries, and particularly in Italy, these means are still uncommon so that the development of technology is often prevented. This paper, based on an empirical analysis on a survey of 46 small high-tech Italian firms, aims at exploring the problems experienced by small businesses in gaining access to debt and equity finance. The results highlight that traditional financial sources are inadequate to finance innovative projects. The questioned firms rely mainly on personal finance, and secondly on short term bank debt; they are truly involved in maintaining control over the firm activities and are willing to issue outside equity only if the new investors also provide non financial competencies. Among the 46 interviewed firms, only 10 are willing to be listed in the future on small firms' stock markets.     

Deregulation in Services and the Marketing Challenge

This paper contributes to the literature on international firm activities by providing the first evidence on the link between productivity and both exports and foreign direct investment (FDI) in services firms from a highly developed country. It uses unique new data from Germany, one of the leading actors in the world market for services. Statistical tests and regression analyses indicate that the productivity pecking order found in numerous studies using data for firms from manufacturing industries – where the firms with the highest productivity engage in FDI while the least productive firms serve the home market only and the productivity of exporting firms is in between – does not exist among firms from services industries. There is evidence that firms with FDI are less productive than firms that export; this finding is in line with recent empirical results reported for software firms from India.     

Home Firm Performance After Foreign Investments and Divestitures

An almost undisputed aim for firms in today's globalised world is to operate internationally. Several papers find a positive relationship between foreign direct investment (FDI) and the domestic performance of firms. In this paper, we address the ‘FDI – export’ relationship to better understand this trend. Furthermore, by presenting results on firm's post‐divestiture employment growth at home, we are able to provide a more comprehensive view on firm performance after stepping in and out of foreign markets. We apply a propensity score matching technique in combination with a difference‐in‐difference estimator to analyse the performance dynamics of French firms that either invested abroad or carried out foreign divestitures during the period 2000–2007. FDI has, on average, a positive effect in terms of export share, operating turnover and employment in firm's domestic market. Industry differences reveal that firms in high‐tech industries experience a strong increase in their domestic performance, whereas firm performance in low‐tech industries increases only moderately in post‐investment periods. In contrast, the divestiture impact on the post‐divestiture performance is rather negligible.     

Foreign Direct Investments and Domestic Employment of German SMEs: The Moderating Effect of Owner Management

Despite considerable research, the relationship between foreign direct investment (FDI) and domestic employment is still inconclusive. The present paper contributes to extant research by providing differentiated findings on the FDI and domestic employment relationship. We examine how horizontal and vertical FDI impact domestic employment and how the effects are contingent on the ownership structure of the firm. Testing hypotheses on a dataset of 1,079 German small and medium‐sized enterprises (SMEs) shows that horizontal FDI has a positive influence, whereas vertical FDI has a negative influence on domestic employment. Furthermore, domestic downsizing due to the establishment of foreign production subsidiaries is less severe in owner‐managed SMEs.     

The Influence of Firm's Size and International Experience on the Ownership Structure of Italian FDI in Manufacturing

The literature on foreign direct investment (FDI) has analysed the entry mode choice by multinational enterprises (MNEs) from several theoretical viewpoints. Nevertheless, previous studies have mainly focused on the behaviour of large and established MNEs while little attention has been given to small- and medium-sized firms.The paper aims at providing further empirical evidence on the role of firm size and international experience in influencing the ownership structure of FDI. The main hypothesis is that smaller firms, characterised by financial and managerial constraints, as well as firms lacking experience in managing foreign operations, suffer from a condition of adverse asymmetry in information costs, compared to their competitors. Therefore, they are forced to act prudently, minimising risk and thus preferring a less control arrangement of foreign subsidiaries.A binomial logistic model is developed with reference to manufacturing foreign direct investments undertaken by Italian firms in the period 1986–1993.     

FDI expansion speed of state-owned enterprises and the moderating role of market capitalism: Evidence from China

Drawing on an institutional logics perspective and isomorphism viewpoint, we posit that the negative impact of state ownership on the speed of foreign direct investment (FDI) expansion is attributed to the state socialism logic, which is inconsistent with market-oriented mechanisms that underpin rapid international expansion. We further argue that firms associated with the market capitalism logic shape an institutional context in which state-owned enterprises (SOEs) may adjust their behaviors by adopting market-oriented practices to expand quickly in the global market. Using outward FDI project information from Chinese listed firms over a fourteen-year period, we find evidence that confirms our theoretical predictions. Our analysis shows that, despite the negative relationship between state ownership and the speed of an SOE’s FDI expansion, both the non-state economy in the firm’s subnational region and privately owned enterprises in its industry sector positively moderate this relationship. This study enriches our understanding of institutional complexity in emerging markets and internationalization of emerging-market firms.     

Problems of foreign subsidiaries of SMEs compared with large companies

This paper draws on institutional theory, supplemented with foreign direct investment (FDI) theory, to explain the level of problems encountered by foreign subsidiaries of Japanese small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) and compares them with large companies. The study confirms the importance of institutional factors such as institutional distance, legitimacy, and the state's coercive influence, as well as factors that FDI theory suggests are associated with multinationals, such as high technology and industry concentration. SMEs differ from large companies in some of the operational areas in which their foreign subsidiaries face high levels of problems, but both seem challenged by problems with labor and low-price foreign competition.     

Developing countries in competition for foreign investment

This study analyzes the competition for foreign direct investment (FDI) among countries at different stages of development. It is assumed that domestic companies in a more-developed country use more capital in production and that wages in a less-developed country are lower. Countries can compete for FDI by increasing the supply of public inputs in the economy, in addition to (or instead of) offering subsidies or tax reliefs to foreign investors. The results reveal that if governments of competing countries are not allowed to discriminate between domestic and foreign firms, there may be situations in which a less-developed economy will attract FDI depending on the labor cost differential and the responsiveness of foreign investor's and domestic companies' output to changes in the supply of public inputs. If tax discrimination between domestic and foreign firms is permitted, both countries will optimally raise the supply of public inputs, but the more-developed country will always win the foreign investment despite higher labor costs. Thus, governments of less-developed countries may have an incentive to work on an international agreement to disallow tax discrimination.     

Financial Information Credibility,Legal Environment,and SMEs’ Access to Finance

Abstract

There remains academic debate on the association between credible financial information and small firms’ access to diversified sources of finance. This study investigates the role of credible financial information and its interaction with a country’s legal and regulatory environment on the access of small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) to diversified sources of finance in 129 developing countries. The findings indicate positive impacts of financial information quality and a country’s legal and regulatory environment on small firms’ access to diversified sources of finance. SMEs operating in a weak legal and regulatory environment benefit more from providing credible financial information. The findings are robust after controlling for the endogeneity of firms audit decision using a two-stage instrumental variable method. Our evidence suggests that firms’ credible signaling of the quality of their financial information helps reduce the adverse selection problem for finance suppliers, increasing small firms’ access to diversified sources of finance.     

FDI,market signal and financing constraints of firms in China

On the basis of an augmented Euler equation, we use firm survey data provided by the World Bank to investigate the impact of FDI (foreign direct investment) on the financing constraints of firms in China. First we calculate the forward and backward linkages of FDI. Then through empirical estimation, we find that only private firms have financing constraints and that the incoming FDI alleviates this situation. Private firms with more foreign capital shares or having stronger vertical linkage with FDI can get financial resources easily. Furthermore, industries hosting a large amount of FDI are favorite clients of the financial institutions because they are usually much more competitive in the world. As a result, the private firms in these industries also have easier access to financial resources. In the financial market, FDI is a helping hand that reduces the information asymmetry between firms and financial institutions. Financial resources go where FDI goes, which to some extent improves the allocation efficiency.     

When Do Local Firms Benefit from Inward Foreign Direct Investment? A Longitudinal Study of China's Manufacturing Sector Covering 1998–2007

Using comprehensive panel data on manufacturing firms in China during the 1998–2007 period, this study examines whether and when recipient local firms benefit from foreign direct investment (FDI). Local firms’ productivity improvements by the presence of foreign entrants are estimated, and according to the results, the relationship between FDI and local firms’ productivity shows an inverted U‐shaped pattern, with productivity increasing up to a certain point beyond which a higher level of FDI reduces local firms’ productivity. More importantly, the U‐shaped pattern is found for FDI from both non‐HMT foreign firms and overseas Chinese HMT (Hong Kong, Macao, and Taiwan) firms. In addition, the U‐shaped pattern varies across subnational regions such that the threshold at which an increase in FDI reduces productivity is lower for indigenous firms in coastal regions. This suggests that in China, local firms in inland and rural regions are the top beneficiaries of spillover effects. © 2015 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.