The role of foreign firms in domestic exporting

This paper investigates the impact of foreign firms on exports of domestic exporting firms. We show that domestic firms respond to an increase in the presence of foreign firms by increasing their exports, despite the increase in foreign presence can drive up the production cost and make domestic market more profitable. This hypothesis is then tested in China, where we find a 1 per cent increase in foreign presence causes domestic firms to increase their exports by 0.74 per cent. This finding sheds light on understanding China’s massive exports and fast inflow of foreign investment observed in the past three decades.Export; Foreign Firm; FDI; Spillovers; China

Technical Efficiency and Its Determinants in Gansu, West China

This paper analyses the technical efficiency problem in Gansu Province, West China, using firm-level cross-sectional data. Compared with previous studies, which mostly focus on industries, this paper focuses on a geographic area instead. By applying the stochastic frontier framework, this paper arrives at four major findings : first, resource-based firms are more technically efficient on average than non-resource-based firms; second, foreign investment is beneficial to the improvement of technical efficiency; third, there is no evidence that ownership affects the technical efficiency of firms in Gansu province; and fourth, bigger firms tend to operate with more technical efficiency than smaller firms.stochastic frontier, technical efficiency, China

Impact of aggregation on measuring FDI spillovers: a Monte Carlo appraisal

Using a Monte Carlo experiment, this paper explores the impact of data aggregation on measuring the FDI spillovers. We find the aggregation significantly covers up the spillovers, which is further exacerbated by the correlation between the foreign presence and the explanatory variable at the disaggregate level. However, if the FDI at the level of aggregation is proportional to its domestic counterparts, then the aggregation does not affect the measurement of spillovers.Aggregation; Spillovers; FDI

Innovation and its growth effects in China

This chapter explores the aggregate innovation activities and their growth effects in China. First, innovations in China are on an increasing trajectory, with the growth showing little evidence of slowing down. Second, innovations appear to promote economic growth in the long run both at the national and industry levels. Third, there is a lack of short run growth effect from innovations at the national level. In light of the growth effect of innovations and increasingly binding resource constraints, innovations are likely to play an important role in China's future economic growth

Foreign direct investment and product quality in host economies

We examine, both theoretically and empirically, how the presence of FDI affects product quality of domestic firms through worker mobility. Mobility of more productive workers from foreign-invested to domestic firms lowers the cost of production and contributes to improvement in the quality of goods produced by domestic firms. Profit maximisation by firms yields a structural relationship between unobserved product quality and observed revenue, which allows us to identify the impact of FDI on product quality. We use the theoretical model to frame empirical estimation, where we propose a novel approach to correct for sample selection bias. Under some mild assumptions, a set of population moments are derived and estimated using firm-level data from China's beverage manufacturing industry. We find that, on average, (i) working for foreign-invested firms boosts the skill level of workers by 11.12 per cent and (ii) the probability that an FDI-trained worker will move to a domestic firm is approximately 0.3. Estimation of the structural parameters shows that a one per cent increase in FDI leads to approximately 1.4 per cent improvement in product quality of domestic firms in China's beverage manufacturing industry

Foreign direct investment and export quality upgrading in China's manufacturing sector

Using a Melitz-type theoretical model of firm heterogeneity, we show that (i) the presence of foreign firms within an industry affects the industry export quality and (ii) the industry export quality is directly related to the industry export price. As the industry export price can be approximated by the industry export unit value, our work provides a rigorous theoretical justification for several empirical studies that use export unit value as a proxy for export quality. We then convert our theoretical model-based structural relationships into a system of equations. Using industry level panel data from China's manufacturing sector, and measuring the industry export quality by the industry export unit value, we find that an increase in foreign presence in China's manufacturing sector contributes to a significant increase in China's export quality. We also distinguish between foreign presence in China originating from the Hong Kong, Macao and Taiwan (HMT) and non-HMT regions. We find that foreign presence in China's manufacturing sector that originates from the HMT region leads to a much larger increase in China's export quality. The main empirical result is found to be robust with respect to alternative measures of foreign presence and aggregate demand

Impact of aggregation on measuring FDI spillovers: a Monte Carlo appraisal

Using a Monte Carlo experiment, this paper explores the impact of data aggregation on measuring the FDI spillovers. We find the aggregation significantly covers up the spillovers, which is further exacerbated by the correlation between the foreign presence and the explanatory variable at the disaggregate level. However, if the FDI at the level of aggregation is proportional to its domestic counterparts, then the aggregation does not affect the measurement of spillovers

Do Financial Constraints Reduce Process Innovation? Evidence from Australian Firms

Accessing external finance for innovation is difficult. We study the effect of financial constraints on the probability of conducting process innovation, while also considering the role of past experience. We show a firm’s optimal process innovation decision is a function of its previous decision and financial constraints, which naturally leads to a set of population moments for empirical testing with Australian microdata from 2006 to 2018. We find that if a firm did not conduct process innovation previously, financial constraints reduce its probability of process innovation by around 10 per cent. Whereas with previous process innovation, financial constraints reduce the probability by around 12 per cent