Foreign direct investment and the performance of indigenous firms in China’s textile industry (original) (raw)

Simultaneous Impact of the Presence of Foreign MNEs on Indigenous Firms’ Exports and Domestic Sales

Management International Review, 2014

Incorporating the global production network approach and competitor analysis, this paper establishes an analytical framework with two hypotheses for the role of foreign multinational enterprises (FMNEs) in indigenous firms' exports and domestic sales. First, the presence of FMNEs as a whole is likely to have a negative impact on indigenous firms' domestic sales but a simultaneous positive impact on their exports in an emerging economy like China. Second, the presence of MNEs from Hong Kong, Macau and Taiwan (HMT MNEs) is more likely to generate this pattern of impact than MNEs from other countries (Other FMNEs). The FDI-led export strategy contributed to the dominance of the scenario described by the first hypothesis in China, while a higher degree of market commonality and resource similarity of HMT MNEs with that of indigenous Chinese firms than Other FMNEs leads to the second hypothesis. These novel hypotheses are tested and supported by a very large and recent firm-level panel dataset from Chinese manufacturing.

Multinational Enterprises, Foreign Direct Investment and Trade in China: the Chain of Causality in 1980-2003

Journal of Asia Business Studies, 2007

Multinational enterprises (MNEs) play a dominant role in the international business (IB) literature. Traditionally, by far the majority of IB studies deal with issues at the micro level of the individual MNE, or at the meso level of a sample of individual MNEs. This paper focuses on a macro-level issue: the impact of MNE behavior through foreign direct investment (FDI) on international trade, and vice versa. In so doing, this study responds to a recent plea for more macro-level studies in IB into the effect of MNE behavior on the macroeconomic performance of countries as a whole, particularly developing and emerging economies. In this way, IB research would inform the heated debate about the pros and cons of globalization, where antiglobalization rhetoric emphasizes the negative consequences of the increased dominance of MNEs for the world at large and the Third World in particular. In the current study, we focus on the largest developing or emerging economy of all: China. Applying sophisticated econometric techniques, we unravel the causality and direction of FDI -trade linkages for the Chinese economy in the 1980 -2003 period. Recently, Meyer (2004) and Ramamurti (2004) convincingly argued that IB research should partially be redirected to macro-level issues so as to inform opinion and policy-makers about the role of multinational enterprises (MNEs) in the world economy, particularly by linking rich and poor economies. After all, as Meyer (2004: 259) rightly points out, IB studies can help to deepen "our understanding in how foreign direct investment (FDI) influences economic development and national welfare." In the policy domain, this is a controversial issue indeed. On the one hand, traditional economic theory, as advocated by the IMF, would suggest that the role of MNEs and FDI is, by and large, positive. On the other hand, popular antiglobalization rhetoric claims that the modern MNE threatens the world, as is so thought-provokingly argued by such figureheads like Noreeta Hertz (2001) and Naomi Klein (2001). Academically, to date this debate has been dominated by non-IB scholars, particularly economists (Buckley and Casson, 2003). The present paper is an attempt to offer an IB-inspired contribution. Following Meyer's (2004) and Ramamurti's (2004) lead, we deal with the societal effect of FDI in a developing and emerging economy. In effect, we focus on the largest developing or emerging economy of all: China. Applying sophisticated econometric techniques, we unravel the causality and direction of FDI -trade linkages for the Chinese economy in the 1980 -2003 period.

Comparison between Spillovers from Different Sources of FDI on the Chinese Manufacturing Sector

2004

The purpose of this study is to assess the impact of foreign direct investment (FDI) on the labor productivity and technical efficiency for a cross-provincial sample of Chinese industrial sectors, with a special focus on different FDI sources. After considering some econometric issues, such as heteroscedasticity, simultaneity, collinearity, model misspecification, and normality, through some related hypotheses testing this study concludes that different sources of FDI might lead to contrasting effects on local firms in Chinese industries. Investments from Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Macao (THM) seem to improve their technical efficiency in production, whereas investments from other foreign countries (OFC) primarily affect industrial production of China’s regions in terms of enhancing labor productivity.

The impact of foreign ownership, local ownership and industry characteristics on spillover benefits from foreign direct investment in China

International Business Review, 2007

This paper finds that significant variation in FDI spillover effects on local industry is obscured through the aggregation common in most studies. Breaking Chinese industrial data for 2001 down by category of ownership of foreign investor, local firm, and by host industry, we find evidence of greater positive spillovers from FDI in technology-intensive industries than in labour-intensive industries. We also find that overseas Chinese affiliates from Hong Kong, Macau and Taiwan (HMT) generate spillovers to locally owned enterprises (LOEs) in labour-intensive industries, in contrast to western affiliates, which positively impact on the performance of LOEs in technologyintensive industries. Chinese state-owned enterprises (SOEs) benefit from the presence of both HMT affiliates in labour-intensive industries and of western affiliates in technology-intensive industries. Other LOEs (OLOEs), however, benefit only from HMT affiliates' presence in labour-intensive industries. These findings offer some support to host government policies offering generous incentive packages to attract foreign investors in high-technology industries. We find that some aspects of China's status as a transition economy-for example the considerable resources and effective control deployed by the state and SOEs-has helped its development process; however we argue that it is possible for non-transition developing economies to implement similar policies. r

Do Chinese domestic firms benefit from FDI inflow? Evidence of horizontal and vertical spillovers

Using a large panel dataset covering all manufacturing firms (above a minimum scale) in China from 1998 to 2005, this paper examines whether there exist productivity spillovers from foreign direct investment (FDI) to domestic firms. In estimating productivity, we control for a possible simultaneity bias by using semi-parametric estimation techniques. We find that Hong Kong, Macao and Taiwan (HMT) invested firms generate negative horizontal spillovers, while Non-HMT foreign invested firms (mostly from OECD countries) tend to bring positive horizontal spillovers in China. These two opposing horizontal effects seem to cancel out at the aggregate level. We also find strong and robust vertical spillover effects on both state-owned firms and non-state firms. However, vertical spillover effects from export-oriented FDI are weaker than those from domestic-market-oriented FDI.

Spillover Effect from Foreign Direct Investment in China

It is important for both academic research and policy making to investigate the net effect on total factor productivity of domestic firms brought about by the Foreign Direct Investment (FDI). On the one hand, domestic firms could learn from foreign-invested firms by imitating their technologies and management practices, poaching their employees and using the same export channels. On the other hand, foreign invested firms may take away the market shares from domestic firms, thereby decreasing their scale of operation and lowering down their productivity. This paper studies the net effect of foreign direct investment on the productivity of domestic firms using an extensive dataset containing about 1 million observations between 1998 and 2003. With the Olley-Pakes estimation of total factor productivity and the Fixed-Effects model, we find positive net effect of FDI on the productivity of domestic firms. We further find that the net effect of FDI attenuates with the distance between foreign direct investment and the domestic firms. The latter result has important policy implications given the significant size of China's geography and the extremely uneven distribution of foreign direct investments.

Productivity spillovers from foreign direct investment in Chinese industries

Journal of Chinese Economic and Business Studies, 2009

This paper reviews the empirical literature on technology spillovers from foreign direct investment (FDI) in developing countries. The sample includes 32 studies that model the contribution of FDI presence to local productivity in the host country through spillover effects such as those associated with technology transfer and superior managerial know-how. In our quantitative meta-analysis, study estimates of spillover effects are regressed on a number of study characteristics in order to determine what aspects of study design and data characteristics explain the magnitude, significance, and direction of spillovers from FDI. The meta-regression results suggest that spillover effects are more pronounced when studies measure the effect of FDI spillovers on output, and are more likely to be significant and positive for Asian countries. Results also highlight the possibility that the documented spillover effects from FDI in developing countries may be partly a product of model misspecification.