سرمایه گذاری مستقیم خارجی و اثر سرریزی تکنولوژی: نظریه و شواهد

Within the endogenous growth framework, we offer an explanation on how foreign direct investment (FDI) generates externalities in the form of technology transfer. We distinguish between the level and rate effects of spillovers on the productivity of domestic firms. A new insight gained from the theory is that the level and rate effects of spillovers can go in opposite directions. The negative level effect underscores the fact that technology transfer is a costly process—scarce resources must be devoted to learning. The positive rate effect indicates that technology spillovers enhance domestic firms' future productive capacity. Using a large panel of Chinese manufacturing firms, we find suggestive evidence that an increase in FDI at the four-digit industry level lowers the short-term productivity level but raises the long-term rate of productivity growth of domestic firms in the same industry. We also find that spillovers through backward and forward linkages between industries at the two-digit level have similar effects on the productivity of domestic firms, and backward linkages seem to be statistically the most important channel through which spillovers occur.

Attracting foreign direct investment (FDI) has become an essential part of development strategies among less developed countries (LDCs). Many offer special incentives to foreign investors, such as tax holidays, tariff reductions or exemptions, and subsidies for infrastructure.1 To a large extent, such policies have indeed been instrumental in accelerating FDI flows into LDCs. According to the latest World Bank report,2 the net FDI flows into low-income countries were more than tripled between 1990 and 2001, increasing from about $2.6 billion in 1990 to $9 billion in 2001. Middle-income countries also experienced an increase in the net FDI inflows from about $21 billion to $162 billion over the same period. China stands out among middle- and low-income countries with a net FDI inflow of about $44 billion in 2001, which is more than 12 times of the 1990's $3.5 billion. Although FDI is widely believed to be beneficial to its recipient countries from financing a savings gap or balance of payments deficit to increasing exports and earning foreign currency, to increasing employment,3 preferential policies toward FDI rest, in large part, on the assumption that FDI generates externalities in the form of technology transfer, including advanced technology, management methods, new products and new processes. There are arguments in favor of FDI as a conduit for technology transfer. Domestic firms can learn from foreign-invested firms by observation or by establishing business relations with the latter or through labor turnover as domestic employees move from foreign to domestic firms. In an influential study, Findly (1978) suggests that the capital in foreign-invested firms play the role of a generalized promoter of technology improvement—the more chances do domestic firms have to observe the advanced technology used by foreign-invested firms, the faster does domestic technology level grow. Wang (1990) extends Findlay's model by establishing a link between FDI and the growth of domestic human capital. In his model, an increase in FDI induces more investments in human capital, which enhances the catch-up potential of the recipient country. Fosfuri et al. (2002) and Glass and Saggi (2002a) present models of technology spillovers through labor turnover. Walz (1997) suggests that the presence of foreign-invested firms in LDCs brings about knowledge spillovers to the domestic R&D sector and hence contributes to economic growth. Glass and Saggi (1998) maintain that product imitation by local firms in an LDC is possible only when a foreign-invested firm produces the product within the country. Glass and Saggi (2002b) further argue that the presence of FDI benefits domestic firms by lowering the cost of imitation. The empirical evidence on whether FDI facilitates technology spillovers is ambiguous. Caves (1974) finds positive and significant spillovers in the Australian manufacturing sector. Rhee and Belot (1989) claim that the entry of foreign firms is largely responsible for the creation and subsequent growth of domestically owned textile firms in Mauritius and Bangladesh. However, Germidis (1977) examines a sample of 65 multinational subsidiaries in 12 developing countries and finds almost no evidence of technology transfer from foreign to local firms. Haddad and Harrison (1993) find negative spillovers associated with FDI in Morocco. In a study of Venezuelan firms, Aitken and Harrison (1999) find that FDI affects adversely the productivity of domestic firms. To explain their results, they put forward a “market-stealing” hypothesis arguing that, while FDI may promote technology transfer, foreign-invested firms gain market shares at the expense of domestic firms and force the latter to produce smaller outputs at higher average costs. As a result, the overall benefit of FDI is small. Using a panel of manufacturing industries from China, Liu (2002) shows that FDI has large and significant impacts on the productivity of manufacturing industries in the domestic sector. Javorcik (2004) reports evidence for positive productivity spillovers from foreign firms to their local suppliers in upstream sectors in Lithuania. In this paper, we investigate whether the presence of FDI affects the productivity level as well as the rate of productivity growth of domestic firms. The distinction between the short-term level effect and long-term rate effect of FDI on the productivity of domestic firms is important. If resources must be expended in order to learn from foreign-invested firms, it is possible that the spillovers have a negative effect on the productivity of domestic firms in the short run yet a positive effect on the productivity of domestic firms in the long run, because such learning helps enhance the firm's future productive capacity. The latter depends crucially on whether technology spillovers affect the rate of productivity growth of domestic firms. We offer one possible explanation for this scenario in the context of a model of endogenous growth at the firm level, in which firm-specific capital is the engine of firm-specific productivity growth. The accumulation of such capital requires the investment by managers of the firm in terms of time and effort. Since such investment activity, although enhances the firm's future productive capacity, diverts managerial time and effort away from current production of outputs, it affects adversely the short-term productivity level of the firm. The basic idea is not entirely new. The firm-specific capital is analogous to human capital in endogenous growth models, such as those presented in Lucas (1988) and Romer (1990), and is in spirit similar to the organization capital stressed in Prescott and Visscher (1980). The model analyzed in this paper extends the endogenous growth model developed in Ehrlich et al. (1994) by incorporating externalities into the production of firm-specific capital. Specifically, the public knowledge on technology, management methods as well as new products and processes associated with FDI serves as an input in the production of firm-specific capital, augmenting the productivity of all other factors. An increase in the stock of public knowledge leads the firm to change the optimal allocation of managerial time between current production of outputs and accumulation of firm-specific capital in favor of the latter which in turn reduces the firm's short-term productivity level but raises its long-term rate of productivity growth. The model has the feature that technology transfer (even in the form of spillovers) does not take place automatically and is a costly learning process.4 In the empirical analysis, we estimate models that are appropriate for testing the implication of our theory and yet flexible enough to accommodate other considerations. We also distinguish between intraindustry and interindustry spillovers. Our empirical results based on a large panel of Chinese manufacturing firms are by and large consistent with the predictions of our theoretical model. First, FDI facilitates technology transfers to domestic firms through spillovers. Second and more importantly, such spillovers lower the short-term productivity level, but raise the long-term rate of productivity growth of domestic firms. Third, taken together the level and rate effects of spillovers, the overall external benefits associated with FDI in terms of productivity gains accruing to domestic firms are positive and substantial. Fourth, while there is suggestive evidence for intraindustry or horizontal spillovers, backward linkages seem to be statistically the most important channel through which technology spills over from foreign to domestic firms. The rest of the paper is organized as follows. Section 2 presents a model of firm-specific productivity growth that incorporates the external effects of FDI. The theoretical analysis provides a basis for the empirical model to be discussed in Section 3. Section 4 contains a description of the data and key variables used in the empirical estimations. The results are presented in Section 5. Section 6 concludes

It is now generally recognized that FDI brings multiple benefits to its recipient country. But many of them are short-term gains. For example, FDI is alleged to promote economic growth of its recipient country by filling the savings gap. According to the neoclassical growth theory, however, economic growth based on capital accumulation is not sustainable because of diminishing marginal returns to capital. Therefore, for FDI to promote long-term economic growth, it must lead the recipient country to adopt policies that are conducive to economic growth (such as encouraging human capital investments) or policies that facilitate technology transfer. In this paper, we focus on the latter by addressing the question whether FDI generates spillovers that benefit domestic firms in the host country. Within the endogenous growth framework, we offer an explanation on how technology spillovers take place at the firm level. Our theoretical analysis suggests that spillovers associated with FDI could cause a decrease in the short-term productivity level but an increase in the long-term rate of productivity growth of domestic firms. The negative level effect of spillovers underscores the fact that technology transfer (even through externalities) does not occur automatically and is a costly learning process. The positive rate effect of spillovers is in accordance with the central thesis of the endogenous growth literature that identifies human capital or knowledge as the ultimate engine of economic growth. Serving as a source of knowledge, FDI promotes sustainable productivity growth among domestic firms. The empirical evidence gleaned from a large panel of Chinese manufacturing firms is by and large consistent with the theoretical predictions. The estimates show that an increase in FDI in the industry at the four-digit level lowers the short-term productivity level but raises the long-term rate of productivity growth of domestic firms. Since the level effect results in a loss in the productivity level and the rate effect leads to a gain in productivity applicable to all future periods, the latter dominates the former in the long run and domestic firms benefit from the presence of FDI in their industries (i.e., intraindustry spillovers). When we do not distinguish between the level and rate effects of spillovers, the estimated effect of spillovers, which is a mixture of the level and rate effects, is often negative. These results may explain at least partly why previous studies that focus on the relation between productivity levels and FDI have yielded conflicting results. They also highlight the importance of separating the level from rate effect of spillovers in empirical investigations, especially when the sample used covers a relatively short time span—a fact applies virtually to all studies. We also expand our model to allow for interindustry or vertical spillovers that take place through backward or forward linkages between foreign and domestic firms in different industries. The empirical results, based on our spillover proxies that reflect the extent of linkages between industries at the two-digit level, are generally consistent with our theoretical expectations. While there is some evidence for positive rate effects associated with all three forms of spillovers, the estimates associated with intraindustry spillovers in particular are not always statistically significant at conventional levels of significance. Among the three spillover channels, we find that backward linkages are statistically the most important channel through which technology spills over from foreign-invested to domestic firms. Although our model features technology spillovers as a costly process which is supported by our empirical findings, learning costs may vary across domestic firms depending on firms' managerial and technical capacities as well as their ability to finance the adoption of advanced technology. There is also the question whether some domestic firms have a structure of incentives that leads their managers to focus on the long-term, rather than short-term, profitability of their firms. The incentive structure may differ across firms of different ownership types. While the existing literature has recognized the importance of human capital in facilitating technology transfer, the financial capability and incentive structure of domestic firms may be equally important. We will address these issues in future studies.