سرمایه گذاری مستقیم خارجی در خدمات و بهره وری تولید: مدارک و شواهد برای شیلی

This paper examines the impact of substantial foreign direct investment (FDI) inflows in producer service sectors on the total factor productivity (TFP) of Chilean manufacturing firms. Positive effects are obtained in firm fixed effects instrumental variables regressions and show that forward linkages from FDI in services explain 7% of the observed increase in Chile's manufacturing users' TFP. Our findings also suggest that service FDI fosters innovation activities in manufacturing. Moreover, we show that service FDI offers opportunities for laggard firms to catch up with industry leaders.

Foreign direct investment (FDI) inflows into the service sector experienced a boom during the 1990s. By 2002, services accounted for 60% of the world stock of FDI, a four-fold increase since 1990 (UNCTAD, 2004). In developed and developing countries alike, the main recipients of FDI have been profit-seeking producer services which range from network-intensive services such as electricity, telecommunications, and transport to finance and business services. These sectors are characterized by the facilitating and intermediating role which they play for downstream user firms (Francois, 1990). Thus, producer service sectors are an intricate component of a country's business environment. In emerging economies where manufacturing firms are constrained by cumbersome business environments, it is particularly relevant to understand how the performance of service sectors can be improved and how that supports business development and, thus, overall economic growth. FDI is a potentially powerful means to achieve such improvements as it might increase the quality and variety of services available as well as lower their cost. Manufacturing firms may benefit from their interaction with foreign services suppliers through spillovers of management, organizational, marketing, or technological knowledge (Markusen, 1989 and Rivera-Batiz and Rivera-Batiz, 1992).

This paper finds that FDI in services had a positive effect on Chilean manufacturing firms' TFP. In the estimation particular care was taken to measure the intensity of service usage by firms given the large degree of heterogeneity of usage found within industries. Also, we employ three different methodologies to obtain unbiased TFP estimates. Moreover, endogeneity concerns that inevitably arise when attempting to estimate causal effects of service FDI on manufacturing firms' TFP are addressed using firm fixed effects instrumental variable estimation whereby service FDI penetration weighted by historic firm intensity of service usage is instrumented using values of the outward FDI stocks in service sectors of the two major foreign investors in Chile, Spain and the U.S., weighted by historic firm intensity of service usage.