Effects of foreign equity participation on recipient firm exports

Abstract

ABSTRACTWe offer new evidence on the role of foreign investment in domestic firms’ export decisions, both at intensive and extensive margins, using balance sheet data from a panel of manufacturing firms in India. In contrast to the existing literature, we analyse the effect of foreign investment at different levels, where the levels correspond to percentages of foreign equity. We use a selection procedure to control for the potential self-selection of firms into export participation. Though we do find that foreign investment increases a domestic firm’s likelihood to export, firms with majority foreign equity are found to serve domestic market more, once the self-selection is accounted for.