外商直接投资技术外溢对我国产业发展影响的实证分析

我国吸引外商直接投资的不断上升,使得人们越来越关注大量外资的流入对我国经济与社会发展所产生的影响,其中焦点之一是是否存在着外资对国内企业发展的技术外溢效应。本文以前人研究成果为理论分析背景,对我国吸引外商直接投资的技术外溢效应进行了实证检验,得出了外商直接投资对我国经济发展、技术进步具有正外溢效应的结论。认为大力吸引外资作为一项基本国策应长期坚持下去。     

Market Entry and Investment in Vietnam: Long Term Enticements and Short Term Hurdles: Evidence from British Investors

SUMMARY

Following the promulgation of a relatively progressive foreign investment law in late 1987-aimed at attracting western capital, technology, know-how and gaining access to global (and convertible currency) markets–Vietnam has gained a significant degree of interest amongst foreign companies. This paper profiles Vietnam's host country business environment, depicts the character of foreign direct investment so far undertaken (and its legislative background) before assessing the perceived attractions of the Vietnam host market, and the problems encountered by those intrepid firms that have entered this relatively uncharted new market. The empirical evidence emanates from a survey conducted into the experiences of British companies operative in Vietnam between 1988 and 1993.     

The Determinants of Intra-European Foreign Direct Investment Flows: Market Integration and Policy Issues

SUMMARY

This paper reviews the literature on the determinants of foreign direct investment (FDI) and the European Community (EC), especially the few studies concerned with intra-European FDI. It applies international business theory to investigate the determinants of FDI flows within the EC over the period 1984–89. The key results are that the models found contrast with the standard US-EC literature, and also differ within the EC. Real variables assume the greatest importance, although financial variables do appear significant. The pattern of findings suggests that the growth of intra-EC FDI is linked to the adoption of a pan-European FDI strategy by EC firms, largely prompted by EC market integration.     

WHY IS THERE A LACK OF EVIDENCE ON KNOWLEDGE SPILLOVERS FROM FOREIGN DIRECT INVESTMENT?

Empirical analyses of knowledge spillovers from foreign direct investment (FDI) offer mixed results; they find positive, neutral and negative FDI spillover effects. This lack of evidence mainly comes from the results of firm‐level panel data analysis. This is important since this approach seems to be the most appropriate for estimating FDI spillovers. The paper takes a look at recent substantive and methodological developments in FDI spillover analysis, which have brought some more optimistic results with regard to FDI spillovers, and can help in further development in this field. The main substantive development relates to the introduction of a broad variety of sources of firm heterogeneity (foreign affiliates as well as local firms) in the analysis. Others include differentiation between vertical (inter‐industry) and horizontal (intra‐industry) spillovers, and host country absorptive capacity for knowledge spillovers. Methodological developments relate to distinguishing between technological/knowledge and productivity spillovers, improvement of modelling and estimation methods, and an increased amount and quality of data.     

Political culture and foreign direct investment: The case of Italy

Does the political culture of an area have any impact on the foreign direct investment (FDI) decisions of multinational corporations (MNCs)? This question is difficult to address empirically, as locations differ in many dimensions. We therefore address this question by examining MNC investment location decisions with regard to different regions within a single country. The country we examine is Italy, which exhibits one of the highest levels of variation with regard to the political culture of its geographical regions. We find that political culture as represented by the pattern of support for political parties at different points on the political spectrum has a significant impact on the MNC investment location decision. Thus, in choosing between locations on a short list, where economic and financial location factors are roughly similar, political culture can have a determining influence. In the case of Italy, a Center-right orientation is conducive to MNC FDI, while a Center-left orientation is not. A Far-left orientation is found to have a very negative effect on FDI.     

DOES FDI ACTUALLY AFFECT INCOME INEQUALITY? INSIGHTS FROM 25 YEARS OF RESEARCH

While there are 25 years of empirical research on how FDI may affect income inequality, there is surprisingly no consensus on this issue. In this paper, we conduct a meta-analysis on the effect of FDI on inequality using 543 empirical studies from 1995 to 2019. Among various factors, we find that the development level of the study country has the strongest influence on the direction in which FDI affects income inequality. When the primary studies are sorted into three groups based on the GDP per capita of their sample areas, the within-group estimates on the effect of FDI on income inequality become strongly consistent with each other. Particularly, we find that FDI is associated with higher inequality for the low-income group, has no statistically significant effect for the middle-income group, and is associated with lower inequality for the high-income group. This observation suggests that FDI may increase income inequality as a country initially develops, but reduce inequality as development deepens.     

DOES INVESTOR PROTECTION INCREASE FOREIGN DIRECT INVESTMENT? A META‐ANALYSIS

We undertake a meta‐analysis of the effects of international investment agreements for the protection of foreign investors on foreign direct investment using 2107 estimates drawn from 74 studies. Our meta‐analysis finds robust evidence that effect of international investment agreements is so small as to be considered zero.  However, our results do not rule out the possibility that the effect of these agreements is, in fact, positive and that current research methods are insufficiently powerful or precise to identify the underlying genuine effect. FDI from developed countries appears to be more responsive to the existence of investment protection, and there is evidence of publication–selection bias in favour of studies that find a positive effect for investor protection.     

A spatial analysis of inward FDI and urban–rural wage inequality in China

This article investigates the spatial effect of inward foreign direct investment (FDI) on urban–rural wage inequality, both in the short and long run, by employing the Spatial Durbin Model. In particular, we carefully consider the heterogeneity of inward FDI with respect to its entry mode (ownership type) and sectoral distribution. Based on a panel dataset covering 30 provinces and cities in China from 2000 to 2016, our results show that inward FDI does not increase urban–rural wage inequality. In particular, we do not find a significant relationship between inward FDI in the secondary and tertiary sectors, while inward FDI in the primary sector has a slightly negative effect on inequality. When we consider inward FDI by entry mode, we find that wholly foreign-owned enterprises (WFE) have a negative spatial effect on urban–rural wage inequality in the short and long run, while equity joint ventures (EJV) reduce urban–rural inequality in the long run only.     

Do independent fiscal institutions cause better fiscal outcomes in the European Union?

This paper explores the budgetary implications of the independent fiscal institutions (IFIs) in the European Union (EU). We employ a dynamic panel model for the period 2000–2019 and find that these fiscal watchdogs have a positive and significant influence not only on government budget balance for the EU member states, resulting in smaller government budget deficits, but also on countries’ compliance with fiscal rules, results that hold across alternative fiscal balances. IFIs appear to have a beneficial impact on fiscal performance and compliance with numerical targets in countries with poorly designed fiscal responsibility norms but weaker influence when fiscal rules are less binding (well-designed fiscal rules). The findings remain significant regardless the year of accession to the EU (old vs. new members) or euro-area status (euro-area vs. non-euro-area members). However, we document that IFIs play a larger role in countries that established these monitoring bodies before 2013, indicating that experience matters in IFI performance. Also, our findings show that the influence of IFIs remains if we take into account institutional reforms in which their mandates were extended with different powers and tasks, which has a positive and significant effect on fiscal balances. Moreover, we find that, under the circumstance of systemic and banking crises, these institutions are associated with improved fiscal outcomes, reflecting their increased concern about the path of public finances and their role in reducing budgetary forecasting biases. Our results are robust to a variety of specifications and models, including alternative measures of the government budget balance and after controlling for a set of institutional characteristics and for potential endogeneity in the estimations.     

Inter-jurisdiction subsidy competition for a new production plant: What is the central government optimal policy?

This paper models inter-jurisdiction competition for foreign direct investment and optimal government policy intervention to protect the national interest. The inter-jurisdiction competition for a multinational has the potential of favouring the multinational and of becoming detrimental for the host country. The central government wants to limit such competition but it cannot tax-discriminate between different types of multinationals. We find that the central government would use tax policy to create asymmetries even when the underlying structure is symmetrical. This offers a novel explanation for the creation of ‘Special Economic Zones’ in many countries, which are well known to be aimed at the attraction of foreign direct investment.     

Fiscal performance and elections in the context of a transition economy

It is widely accepted that, in democratic societies, incumbent governments may use various means, such as discretionary spending, to increase their chances of re-election. In the context of potential budget constraints (e.g., large debt), the incumbent might consider alternative means. Tax collection performance could be one such means that is prone to incumbents’ electoral manipulation, particularly in transition countries with a weak institutional framework. Investigating Albania, we show that fiscal performance, measured by monthly tax revenues, is poor before elections, especially in elections that result in political change. Before all elections, we observe a reduction in tax collection ranging from 3.2 percentage points in the twelve months before elections to 4.0 percentage points in the six months before elections. This implies a drop of more than half in fiscal performance compared with its long-term “natural” or average rate. Moreover, the deterioration in performance is considerably larger, by two- to threefold, before “change elections” (i.e. elections that result in a change of the governing party). After these elections, fiscal performance improves. The key to reducing deterioration in fiscal performance associated with elections is to establish rules and institutional oversight (independent or bipartisan) that reduce the discretion of tax authorities.     

Foreign direct investment and its determinants: A regional panel causality analysis

Moving beyond traditional one- or possibly two-way causality involving foreign direct investment (FDI), a systematic approach is implemented for delineating both short- and long-run flows of causality involving FDI and a comprehensive set of FDI's possible determinants. Granger causality procedures incorporating error correction terms are implemented, using provincial panel data from China. In both the short and long run, growth in GDP directly influences FDI, while growth in local infrastructure and local investment provide indirect but not direct influence.