An Analysis of Home Country Trade Effects of Outward Foreign Direct Investment: The Korean Experience with ASEAN, 1987– 2002

Abstract

I. Introduction Foreign direct investment (FDI) has long been exercised by multinational enterprises (MNEs) from industrialized countries. However, during the 1980s and 1990s some developing countries, especially the newly industrialized economies (NIEs) in East Asia, rapidly emerged as one of the major sources of world FDI flows (Suh and Seo 1997; UNCTAD 1995; Petri 1995). During this same period, annual flows of Korean outward FDI increased at an unprecedented pace. For example, Korea's total approved outward FDI, in nominal terms, increased by about 24-fold between 1985 and 2003: from US$219 million in 1985 to US$5,437 million in 2003. Manufacturing was the leading sector, representing almost 53 per cent of the total outward Korean FDI during this period. The trading sector was the next largest sector, with 24 per cent of the total amount (Korea Export-Import Bank 2003). In terms of factor intensity, labour-intensive manufacturing industries mostly relocated to developing countries, particularly ASEAN countries and China, while most Korean FDI conducted in industrialized countries was capital-intensive manufacturing (Tcha 1998). Such a rapid increase in outward FDI has raised some concern among policy-makers and researchers, primarily about the impact of outward FDI on the domestic economy, and potential welfare implications. (1) One major impact of outward FDI is the trade effect, particularly on the exports of a home country. As for the relationship between FDI and trade, theoretical arguments have been made that the two complement or substitute each other. Earlier theoretical efforts, like Mundell (1957), highlight the trade-substituting nature of FDI, and more recent efforts tend to favour FDI being trade-complementing (Markusen 1983, 1984; Helpman 1984, 1985; Helpman and Krugman 1985; Kojima, 1978, 1991 among others). As Petri (1995) and Pfaffermayr (1996) argue, however, the relationship is not predictable because the trade impact of FDI can be influenced by a range of factors, such as firm strategies, motivations for FDI, and government policies. Therefore, the relationship between FDI and trade remains a subject requiting empirical investigation. There is a mixture of results from empirical studies of FDI on home country exports. Some, like Mundell (1957) and Svensson (1996), found FDI had a negative effect on home country exports. Others found outward FDI had a positive effect on exports: Lipsey and Weiss (1981), Helpman (1984), Grossman and Helpman (1989), Lin (1995), Pfaffermayr (1996), Lim and Moon (2001), KOTRA (1997), Hejazi and Safarian (2001). More recently, Lewer and Terry (2003) demonstrate in their evaluation of the impact on trade stemming from capital account liberalization, that foreign capital in general--and FDI--have strong trade creating effects. In this paper, we study the trade impact of Korean outward FDI in four major ASEAN countries. Lim and Moon (2001) have shown the trade impact of FDI using Korean firm-level information. However, their study tends to show foreign affiliates' inclination to export back to the home country, as do other firm-level studies, rather than the trade-creating or displacing effects of FDI. This arises because they did not control for other trade-affecting factors, such as income and prices. Furthermore, firm-level studies ignore the possibility that foreign affiliates in a host country may drive out local firms in an export-oriented industry. In this case, a foreign affiliate's exports may not necessarily be complementing a home country's exports. Therefore, other trade-related variables need to be appropriately controlled in this type of analysis. In the next section, we discuss the theoretical background as to how FDI and trade are potentially related. In section III, a simple econometric model is constructed to empirically investigate the relationship between FDI and trade. The model is set to consider the impact of outward FDI on exports and imports separately, while taking into account country-specific fixed effects. …