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.