The role of foreign direct investment in the host-country firm selection process: firm-level evidence from Slovenian manufacturing

This paper examines the role of inward foreign direct investment (FDI) in firm selection processes in the Slovenian manufacturing sector in the 1994–2003 period. It adopts the firm dynamics framework that allows testing of selection effects directly by assessing the impact of foreign firms’ activity on the probability of exiting of local firms (crowding out). The results show that intra-industry productivity spillover effects offset only a minor part of the competition pressure which results from foreign firm entry, hence incumbent firms experience a drop in their survival probability upon a foreign firm’s entry within a particular industry. This result is driven by foreign firm entry of the greenfield type, as entry through the acquisition of existing firms has no significant effect. The strength of the crowding-out effect decreases with the incumbent firm’s export propensity. There is no significant evidence that inward FDI would stimulate the selection process through backward linkages in the upstream supplying industries, whereas foreign firms’ activity reduces the exit probability of downstream local customers (through forward linkages).     

Multinationals, Hedging, and Capital Structure under Exchange Rate Uncertainty

This paper examines the interplay of the financing and hedging decisions of a risk-averse multinational firm having a wholly-owned foreign subsidiary. Exchange rate risk management of the multinational firm is shown to have direct impacts on its international capital structure decision and on its currency of denomination decision. If a currency forward market exists, the multinational firm will devise its international capital structure so as to minimize the global weighted average cost of capital. Or else the multinational firm has to rely on a money market hedge through issuing more foreign currency denominated debt and less domestic currency denominated debt, thereby resulting in a higher global weighted average cost of capital. JEL Classification Numbers: D81, F23, G32     

Microeconomic mechanisms behind export spillovers from FDI: evidence from Bulgaria

This paper studies how the presence of multinational enterprises affects the export performance of Bulgarian manufacturing firms—export spillovers from FDI. Using export data at the firm/product/destination level for the period 2004–2006, it finds positive forward spillover on export value and quantity, related to quality upgrading. Conversely, it finds negative (or insignificant) backward and horizontal spillover on export flows, related to quality downgrading. When aggregating data at the firm level and considering that a firm can operate in several sectors, the paper shows that the presence of foreign input suppliers allows domestic firms to export additional varieties of lower quality and upgrade the average quality of existing varieties, whereas the presence of foreign customers generates the opposite effect.     

税收征管与企业对外投资:来自“金税工程三期”的证据

近些年来，我国对外投资规模迅猛增长，税收征管强度也在不断提升。那么，税收征管是否推动了中国企业的对外投资行为呢？鉴于鲜有文献探讨这一极具现实意义的话题，本文利用"金税工程三期"政策上线这一提高税收征管能力的准自然实验，采用双重差分法首次实证检验了税收征管对企业对外投资行为的影响作用。研究发现："金税工程三期"这一增加企业纳税遵从度、促进"应收尽收"的税收征管政策冲击显著地提高了企业对外投资的可能性、增加了企业对外投资规模，并且这一结论在引入更多控制变量并排除同期其他政策干扰、安慰剂检验、更换样本周期、倾向得分匹配分析等情况下依旧稳健。潜在的影响机制分析发现，"金税工程三期"这一税收征管政策冲击增加了企业的避税动机，表现为企业偏好于向税率低的东道国进行投资。异质性检验结果显示，"金税工程三期"这一税收征管政策冲击对企业对外投资行为的影响作用在不同对外投资事件类型、不同所有制类型的企业、不同地区、不同行业之间存在明显差异。最后，依据本文结论提出了积极落实减税降费政策、适度地提升银行业竞争水平的政策建议。     

Firm Productivity and Mode of Foreign Expansion: Evidence from Taiwanese Manufacturing Firms

This paper builds on the recent literature on firm heterogeneity in international trade and foreign direct investment (FDI), and aims to empirically examine how firm productivity affects a firm’s foreign market entry strategy beyond the simple binary choice between exporting and FDI. Utilizing the panel data of Taiwanese manufacturing firms during 2002–2012, we further classify FDI methods by whole ownership or a joint venture to investigate a firm’s foreign expansion decision. By performing Kolmogorov–Smirnov (KS) tests, we find that if a firm is more productive, it is more likely to choose FDI rather than exporting. However, productivity of firms choosing whole ownership is not so different from choosing a joint venture. Furthermore, a more productive firm is more likely to conduct both whole ownership of the foreign subsidiary and a joint venture formation in the case of FDI.     

Entry in Foreign Markets under Asymmetric Information and Demand Uncertainty

This paper examines the mode of entry of a multinational firm that has less information about the host market stochastic demand than the local firm. The foreign firm can enter the market either through direct investment or exports. Each entry mode entails different costs and has different informational implications. Entry through foreign direct investment (FDI) is favored by greater variability in demand. Interestingly enough, strategic behavior by the incumbent firm, which deviates from its first period monopoly output, might be aimed at increasing the probability of foreign entry through FDI despite having to compete against an equally informed and efficient entrant; this never happens in a symmetric information environment. Such host firm behavior is aimed at reducing the strategic uncertainty derived from the foreign firm's beliefs. Compared with the symmetric information setting, entry via direct investment may occur in more cases.     

Optimal commercial policy with imperfect foreign supply

Conclusion Maximizing social welfare when there is one foreign firm requires the imposition of fixed domestic price, which results in increased imports from the foreign firm until it engages in marginal cost pricing. A license fee captures (replaces) the foreign firm's economic profit (loss). Extension to the case where foreign supply consists of more than one firm differs from the one-firm analysis in that, while optimale policy consists of the setting of both a license fee and price level for the import, this may entail levying a tariff on imports from the foreign firms. The fee or tariff, but not both, may be negative.     

Export and Strategic Currency Hedging

This paper examines an international Cournot duopoly wherein a home firm and a foreign firm compete in the home market under exchange rate uncertainty. The foreign exporting firm, being risk averse, has incentives to hedge its exchange rate risk exposure. In a two-stage setting, we show that hedging via an unbiased currency futures market acts as a strategic device. In particular, under either constant or decreasing absolute risk aversion, an increase in the hedging volume of the foreign firm promotes its exports and deters the home firm’s output. In contrast to the well-known full-hedging result in a perfectly competitive environment, we find that the foreign firm over-hedges for strategic reasons. Furthermore, the separation result from the hedging literature under perfect competition no longer holds in our duopoly framework, i.e., equilibrium output levels depend on the risk attitude of the foreign firm as well as the probability distribution of the spot exchange rate.     

反倾销政策与研发竞争

借助异质产品的Bertrand双寡头模型,本文分析了一国反倾销政策对该国企业和外国企业的研发、产品价格及社会福利的影响。研究结论表明:与自由贸易相比,当产品的差异度较小时,受反倾销政策保护的企业会策略性地利用反倾销政策而退出国外市场,减少研发投入,进而提高产品价格,而遭受反倾销政策约束的外国企业由于其研发投入的边际收入增加,因而会增加研发投入,降低产品价格。此外,反倾销政策的存在还有可能促进各国社会福利的提升。     

Divide and Rule: Geographical Diversification and the Multinational Firm

We develop a model to illustrate a motive for FDI that derives from a firm's overall locational strategy. A firm, that initially has a plant in its home country, may choose to also have a foreign plant in order to improve its bargaining position versus local labour unions. This permits the firm to reduce wages. Furthermore, the existence of a second foreign plant acts to discipline the demands of foreign workers. Thus, the firm is faced with a link between the wage and its degree of geographical diversification. This drives up the number of plants the firm has in equilibrium.     

International mixed duopoly and strategic commitments

This paper examines an international mixed model in which a social-welfare-maximizing domestic public firm competes against a profit-maximizing foreign private firm. First, the public firm can adopt either a lifetime employment contract or a wage-rise contract as strategic commitments. Second, the foreign private firm decides whether or not to enter the market. Third, if the foreign private firm enters, each firm independently chooses its actual output, while if the foreign private firm does not enter, the public firm acts as a monopolist. The paper shows the equilibrium of the international mixed model.

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).     

PRODUCT DIFFERENTIATION: AN ALTERNATIVE TO CVDS

By using a Cournot model where a domestic firm competes with a foreign firm in the domestic market, this paper suggests that, in addition to countervailing duty measures allowed by the World Trade Organization, product differentiation between the goods produced by the domestic and foreign firms could be considered as a way of eliminating foreign export subsidies.     

Exports, FDI, and Productivity: Dynamic Evidence from Japanese Firms

This paper examines the relationship between exports, foreign direct investment, and firm productivity. Using longitudinal panel data on Japanese firms, it is found that the most productive firms engage in exports and foreign direct investment, medium productive firms engage in either exports or foreign direct investment, and the least productive firms focus only on the domestic market. Moreover, exports and foreign direct investment appear to improve firm productivity once the productivity convergence effect is controlled for. Firms that retain a presence in foreign markets, either by exports or foreign direct investment, show the highest productivity growth, which contributes to improvements in national productivity. JEL no. F10, F20, D21     

An Investigation of the Value Relevance of Alternative Foreign Exchange Disclosures*

We demonstrate analytically and empirically that valuing a firm with foreign operations in the presence of exchange rate uncertainty requires information on the foreign operating cash flows disaggregated by currency and persistence. In particular, given consolidated earnings, investors need information on the exchange gain or loss on permanent foreign operating cash flows. We extend the model to show how the permanent foreign cash flows can be used to condition the change in the translation adjustment to make it value‐relevant; however, using the permanent foreign cash flows directly is superior for valuation purposes. The empirical tests support our hypothesis that the market response to exchange rate movements is sensitive to the relative magnitudes of revenues and costs denominated in each foreign currency in which a firm has transactions. Disclosure of cash flows by currency should enhance the valuation of firms with foreign operations.     

Upstream privatization and downstream licensing

This study attempts to investigate the impact of downstream foreign licensing on upstream privatization policy in a vertically related market, in which a public firm and a domestic private firm supply exclusively to downstream domestic and foreign firms, respectively. We show that downstream licensing occurs when the cost differential between downstream duopolists is small, and the optimal strategy under licensing is upstream partial privatization. In addition, downstream foreign licensing facilitates upstream privatization. We further show that downstream licensing improves (reduces) local welfare when the cost differential is large (small).     

垂直产品差异、外国企业纵向控制与研发政策

在Spencer和Brander(1983)模型的基础上,本文引入产品纵向控制因素,考虑生产高质量产品的非一体化企业与另一国生产低质量产品的一体化企业进行市场竞争时,政府的最优研发政策。在企业进行Cournot竞争的情形下,若产品质量差异较大(小),非一体化企业所在国政府的最优研发政策为征税(补贴),而在企业进行Bertrand竞争的情形下,非一体化企业所在国政府的最优研发策略则是征税。     

Does Foreign Direct Investment Induce Domestic Mergers?

This paper examines the impact of foreign firm entry on the industry consolidation process in a host country that operates through mergers and exits of incumbent firms. Using a three-stage oligopolistic model, the paper shows that foreign direct investment (FDI) may trigger consolidation via a merger since the approval of a domestic merger by the antitrust authority is more likely in the case a foreign firm enters via FDI and a firm’s incentive for a domestic merger is greater and that, in turn, the possibility to merge and become more efficient modifies the outcome of the game by making FDI compared to exports less likely.     

Multinational Learning under Asymmetric Information

The aim of this paper is to analyze the competition between a multinational and the incumbent firm in a foreign market under asymmetric information about demand and unobservable outputs. It is shown that the incumbent firm increases its production in the first period to signal to the multinational that the demand is low. The multinational reduces its output in the foreign market in order to signal-jam. In addition, the multinational increases its production in the other market. However, total production of the multinational is lower. Implications for research and development expenditure by the multinational are examined.     

Why Do Foreign-Owned Firms Pay More? The Role of On-the-Job Training

While foreign-owned firms have consistently been found to pay higher wages than domestic firms to what appear to be equally productive workers, the causes of this remain unresolved. In a two-period bargaining framework we show that if training is more productive and specific in foreign firms, foreign firm workers will have a steeper wage profile and thus acquire a premium over time. Using a rich employer-employee matched data set we verify that the foreign wage premium is only acquired by workers over time spent in the firm and only by those that receive on-the-job training, thus providing empirical support for a firm-specific human capital acquisition explanation. JEL no. F23, J24