آیا سرمایه گذاری مستقیم خارجی بهره ور است؟ مورد مطالعه از مناطق ویتنام

By making use of a recently released dataset that covers a large number of manufacturing firms over the period 2000–2005, this paper examines the impact of foreign direct investment (FDI) and FDI generated spillovers on total factor productivity (TFP) in eight regions of Vietnam. Unlike most existing studies, this paper focuses on the impact of spillovers that take place through both horizontal and vertical linkages. The results presented in this paper suggest that the impact of FDI spillovers on TFP varies considerably across regions. FDI spillovers generate a strong positive impact on TFP through backward linkages only in Red River Delta, South Central Coast, South East and Mekong River Delta while in other regions the impact is negative and mostly insignificant. The paper also examines the impact of the absorptive capacity on TFP growth in each of the eight geographical regions.

Economic reforms create international business opportunities. Due to the rising cost of doing business in China, Vietnam has become a popular destination for foreign investment. A number of existing studies have examined the impact of foreign direct investment (FDI) and FDI-related spillover effects on firm productivity and export behavior in developed as well as developing countries. This paper focuses on Vietnam, a country that due to the rising cost of doing business in China is now attracting significant FDI. However, due to lack of appropriate data, so far, relatively few studies have considered the case of Vietnam. In recent years, the government of Vietnam has started releasing firm level data, including data on FDI inflows that could be used to examine the impact of FDI-related spillover effects on firm performance. Most existing studies, for example Anwar and Nguyen (2010a) and Athukorala and Tien (2012), focus only on the direct effect of FDI on firm performance in Vietnam. In addition, the existing studies (such as Anwar and Nguyen, 2010b) are highly aggregated and hence do not present a clear picture of the impact of FDI on different regions of Vietnam. An important role of the government is to take steps to reduce regional economic disparity. A region by region analysis of the impact of FDI-related spillover effects (i.e., the indirect effect) on firm productivity can provide useful information to domestic policy makers. By making use of a firm level panel dataset, this paper empirically examines the impact of FDI generated horizontal and vertical spillovers on total factor productivity (TFP) of manufacturing firms located in all eight regions of Vietnam. The rest of this paper is structured as follows. Section 2 contains a review of related studies. Section 3 includes a brief description of the methodology. The empirical results are presented and discussed in Section 4. Section 5 contains some concluding remarks.

This paper focuses on the impact of FDI and FDI-generated spillovers on total factor productivity (TFP) growth of manufacturing firms located in all eight regions of Vietnam. An increase in TFP can be attributed to technological advancement. The empirical analysis presented in this paper is based on panel data that covers a large number of manufacturing firms over the period 2000–2005. Unlike the existing studies, this paper considers the impact of FDI spillovers on TFP growth via both horizontal and vertical linkages in different regions of Vietnam. The paper also considers the role of absorptive capacity. The results presented in this paper suggest that impact of FDI and FDI spillovers on TFP of Vietnam's manufacturing firms varies across regions. In other words, the presence of foreign firms is contributing to technological advancement in Vietnam but the rate of such advancement varies considerably across regions of Vietnam. Backward linkages with foreign firms are an important channel of technology transfer from foreign to domestic firms in Red River Delta, South Central Coast, South East, and Mekong River Delta. These regions are well known for (i) better quality infrastructure, (ii) higher level of human capital stock, and (iii) relatively more advanced technology. The empirical analysis presented in this paper also suggests that the effect of horizontal and vertical linkages with foreign firms on TFP of local firms also depends on Vietnamese regions' absorptive capacity. Regions with better technology, stock of human capital and a relatively higher level of financial development gain more benefits from FDI spillovers. It appears that North East, North West, North Central Coast, and Central Highlands regions have not significantly benefited from backward linkages but these regions have benefited from horizontal or forward linkages. It seems that government policy that encourages foreign firms to invest in outer regions of Vietnam has so far not worked. Based on the empirical analysis presented in this paper, Vietnam can gain more benefits from FDI by improving its absorptive capacity. At the central level, Vietnam needs to further develop its financial system. Increased transparency is the first step in this direction followed by further liberalization. Increase in real spending on advanced education and training may help to reduce the technology gap between foreign and local firms and increase the stock of human capital. This combined with infrastructure improvement can help to boost manufacturing sector productivity.