Environmental regulation and outward foreign direct investment: Evidence from China

This paper explores the impact of environmental regulation (ER) on outward foreign direct investment (FDI) flows in China. During the period from 2013 to 2015, all Chinese cities were required to join a nationwide automatic air quality monitoring network in batches, and this policy exogenously raised local environmental regulation. This unique policy implemented full coverage through a staggered adoption, which motivates this paper to apply an event study approach to identify the treatment effect of stringent environmental regulation. Based on a city-year level capital outflows dataset constructed from the fDi Markets database, we obtain three main findings: (1) environmental regulation significantly stimulates outward FDI flows; (2) this promoting effect centers on polluting industries; and (3) these ER-induced FDI outflows are mainly directed toward countries with weaker environmental protection and with a closer geographic and cultural distance to the home country. These results together provide a snapshot confirming the classical “pollution haven hypothesis”.     

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.     

Foreign direct investment and productivity spillovers: Evidence from the Spanish experience

Foreign Direct Investment and Productivity Spillovers: Evidence from the Spanish Experience. — The aim of this paper is to analyse the impact of foreign direct investment (FDI) on firms’ productivity using a panel of Spanish manufacturing firms for the period 1990–1998. Firstly, we show that for countries, like Spain, that are undergoing significant structural changes over the period in question it is important to control for both time-invariant as well as time-variant sectoral characteristics. Secondly, we confirm previous findings that one needs to take into account the “absorptive capacity” of firms when considering whether they are able to avail of externalities associated with FDI presence. For the Spanish case we find that only firms with sufficient levels of such capacity experience positive spillovers.     

Rules of origin and technology spillovers from foreign direct investment under international duopoly

Using a simple three-country model of international duopoly, this study analyzes the optimal choice of rules of origin (ROO) in a free trade area/agreement (FTA) when firms from outside the FTA must undertake foreign direct investment (FDI) in FTA countries and conduct part of their production process within the FTA to comply with the ROO. FDI causes spillovers of the superior production technology from a non-FTA firm to its competitor within the FTA, depending on how much of the production process is shifted to the FTA area. In this situation, this study predicts that as the degree of multilateral trade liberalization before formation of the FTA is higher, the optimal ROO tends to be less stringent.     

外国直接投资与中国经济增长的实证分析

本文简要介绍了外国直接投资与东道国经济增长的相关理论,并对外国直接投资(FDI)与中国经济增长之间数据关系进行了分析,进而利用协整检验技术,验证外国直接投资与中国经济增长之间是否具有长期的稳定关系。最后给出研究结论和启示。     

The impact of foreign direct investment and human capital on economic growth: Evidence from Chinese cities

Using a panel of Chinese cities over the period 1991–2010, we examine the determinants of economic growth, focusing on the role of foreign direct investment (FDI) and human capital. Consistent with the predictions of a human capital-augmented Solow model, we find that the growth rate (along the path to the steady-state income level) of per capita GDP is negatively correlated with population growth rate and positively correlated with investment rate in physical capital and human capital. We find that FDI has a positive effect on the per capita GDP growth rate and this effect is intensified by the human capital endowment of the city. The latter suggests that one way that human capital contributes to growth is to serve as a facilitator for technology transfers stemming from FDI. Furthermore, we find some suggestive evidence that the FDI-human capital complementary effect is stronger for technology-intensive FDI than for labor-intensive FDI. Our results are robust to alternative measures of human capital, model specifications, and estimation methods.     

Overseas industrial parks and China's outward foreign direct investment

We manually collect data on China's overseas industrial parks from 2007 to 2018, and match it with data on the country’s outward foreign direct investment (OFDI), using the system generalized method of moment (system GMM) approach to test how constructing overseas industrial parks affects China's OFDI. The results indicate that each new overseas industrial park established significantly increases China's OFDI by 2.89%. And the effect only exists in non-high-income host countries, rather than high-income host countries. We also investigate the effects of different types of industrial parks, and find that agricultural, light industrial, high-tech, comprehensive and heavy industrial parks have significant effects, while logistics parks do not. The mechanism analysis suggests that establishing overseas industrial parks increases China’s OFDI by reducing host countries’ economic and financial risks, and improving bilateral political relations. We further find that establishing overseas industrial parks is more likely to promote OFDI in host countries with imperfect infrastructure, impeded capital flows and low levels of unimpeded information. Our findings shed light on how developing countries could enlarge and stabilize OFDI.     

Economic and political determinants of foreign direct investment

Four models explaining the flow of foreign direct investment in 80 less developed countries are econometrically estimated and compared by ex post forecasts. A politico-economic model which simultaneously includes economic and political determinants performs best. The higher the real per capita GNP and the lower the balance of payments deficit are, the more foreign direct investment is attracted. Among the political determinants the amount of bilateral aid coming from Western countries and multilateral aid has a stimulating effect, while help from communist countries has a negative effect. Political instability significantly reduces the inflow of foreign direct investment.     

Outward foreign direct investment and technical efficiency: Evidence from Taiwan's manufacturing firms

This paper uses firm-level panel data from Taiwan's manufacturing industries from 1987 to 2000 to investigate the impact of outward foreign direct investment (OFDI) on the technical efficiency of the OFDI firms. Propensity score matching is used to construct an appropriate group of non-OFDI firms to compare with OFDI firms, and a metafrontier framework is subsequently used to calculate comparable technical efficiencies for both groups of firms. Our empirical results reveal that the technical efficiencies of Taiwan's manufacturing firms were increasing over the entire sample period. In addition, our results suggest that the technological advances and the technical efficiency of Taiwan's manufacturing firms are positively correlated with their OFDI activity.     

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     

进口、外商直接投资与经济增长:基于中国数据的经验分析

改革开放20多年来,我国的进口与外商直接投资逐年增加,为我国经济的快速发展发挥了重要的作用,通过分析进口促进经济增长的内在机制之后,本文采用一个扩展的新古典生产函数,利用我国1982～2003年的年度时间序列数据,从实证角度对外商直接投资、尤其是进口对我国经济增长的促进作用进行了考察。研究结果表明,作为我国经济开放的两个重要内容——进口与外商直接投资,对我国的经济增长都有重要的推动作用。     

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).     

Alternative futures and foreign direct investment in China

Chinese history is littered with sharp policy swings, and the communist era, which has not yet fully drawn to a close, has witnessed a veritable embarrassment of riches. This has provided a fertile ground for researchers engaged in crystal ball gazing. Recently, momentum has accelerated on that front, a development apparently reflecting the increasingly fluid political‐economic conditions in the country. The scenarios generated can serve as an effective reference point in planning exercises, but there is scope for solidifying the conceptual architecture. The issue of rendering them highly relevant to foreign investors, presumably very important potential consumers of the product, should also be addressed.     

Vertical foreign direct investment: Evidence from Japanese and U.S. multinational enterprises

Foreign direct investment (FDI) in developing countries has increased since the 1990s, but there is mixed evidence of vertical FDI associated with factor-seeking motives. This paper estimates the vertical motive of offshore production by multinational enterprises (MNEs) by exploiting past schooling characteristics as instruments for skilled-labor abundance in a host country. Using panel data on Japanese and U.S. MNEs in the 1990s, I find that skilled-labor abundance has a significantly negative impact on sales of manufacturing foreign affiliate only for Japanese MNEs. The results suggest that vertical FDI activity was more prevalent in Japanese MNEs than U.S. MNEs. A plausible explanation is that Japanese MNEs might be more vertically integrated with their offshore production than U.S. MNEs. A difference in foreign outsourcing activities could generate the observed deviation between Japanese and U.S. MNEs.     

从外商直接投资看江苏制造业发展战略

一、国际产业转移与江苏制造业的比较优势国际产业转移大多是从发达国家向发展中国家转移,或是从技术领先国家向其他国家扩散。从20世纪70至80年代,国际产业转移大多是在发达国家之间进行。技术优势是导致国际产业转移的主要因素,一国拥有领先的技术是别国产业进入改国的主要原     

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.     

Emission reduction and foreign direct investment nexus in China

This paper employs a difference-in-difference-in-difference approach to examine the emission reduction and foreign direct investment nexus in China. It combines a firm-level dataset with emission reduction target statistics at city-level. The findings indicate that stringent environmental regulation is associated with the fall of the output of foreign firms in general and the shrinking of pollution-intensive industries in cities with heavy emission reduction pressure in particular. It is also shown that the location choice of foreign investment changes as emission reduction targets at city-level vary. Finally it is found that environmental regulation helps improve the structure of foreign direct investment and hence contributes to industrial upgrading in the economy.     

Spillovers from foreign direct investment in services: Evidence at sub-sectoral level for the Asia-Pacific

We take a sectoral level approach to analyzing the effects of foreign direct investment (FDI) inflows. We disaggregate FDI first by manufacturing versus services, then within services by financial services, trade services, and business services. We consider the effects of FDI inflows on growth of GDP per capita, then distinguish between growth in manufacturing and services value added per capita. Our data sample comprises 14 Asia Pacific economies for the period 1985–2012 to which we apply a dynamic panel generalized method of moments estimation technique. Services FDI as a whole is found to have a significantly positive impact on GDP growth while manufacturing FDI is found to have no effect. The impetus for growth from services FDI traces to financial services in particular, acting not only directly on service sector output but through manufacturing sector output as well. By contrast, trade services FDI is found to have a significantly negative effect on manufacturing output with no significant effect on services output. Foreign participation in trade services may act to expose domestic manufacturers to international competition and may also lead to domestic consolidation to take advantage of economies of scale.     

The effects of foreign aid,foreign direct investment and domestic investment on economic growth in African countries: Nonlinearities and complementarities

This paper examines the relationship between foreign aid (AID), foreign direct investment (FDI) and domestic investment (DI) and its effects on economic growth in 41 African countries. Annual panel data from 1990 to 2016 are examined using fixed‐effects (FE) and system‐GMM estimators. We test the existence of nonlinearities and complementarities in the relationship between AID–FDI, AID–DI, FDI–DI, and AID–FDI–DI. Empirical results confirm the existence of a nonlinear relationship between AID, FDI, DI, and economic growth. Besides, the results show that AID and FDI have a significant positive complementing effect on economic growth. It is shown also that FDI complements DI, while the coupled effect of AID and DI remains weak in catalyzing growth. Moreover, the results indicate that the complementarity between AID–FDI–DI positively influence economic growth, revealing that AID and FDI work as a complement factor to DI and enhance its effectiveness in promoting economic growth. These insights have important policy implications. Policy‐makers in African countries are well advised to implement concrete policy measures suitable for building on the growth momentum created by foreign capital inflows, like FDI, AID as well as remittance.