Host Country Productivity Research Articles

Belt and road initiative and export sophistication: The role of China’s outward foreign direct investment

We investigate the impact of China’s outward foreign direct investment (OFDI) on the export sophistication of countries participating in the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). Through an examination of data spanning from 2010 to 2015, our findings reveal that China’s OFDI significantly enhances export sophistication in host countries, with a more pronounced effect observed in relatively poor BRI nations. However, the positive correlation between China’s OFDI and export sophistication diminishes in host countries characterized by elevated productivity levels. Utilizing a structural equation model, we identify host country productivity as a crucial mediating factor. The indirect technology spillover effects of China’s OFDI, facilitated through increased productivity, account for approximately 39% of their overall impact on export sophistication. Furthermore, we delineate threshold effects of productivity for China’s OFDI, demonstrating substantial positive effects in host countries with a GDP per capita below the first threshold (approximately US$1,141) or within the range of the first and second thresholds (around US$7,115). Upon consideration of these thresholds, distinctions in the effects of China’s OFDI between BRI and non-BRI host countries diminish. Our analysis underscores that the favorable influence of China’s OFDI extends beyond the BRI, providing benefits to low and middle-income countries globally.

Offshore FDI, tax havens, and productivity: A network analysis

AbstractResearch summaryMultinational enterprises (MNEs) use tax havens to benefit from international tax arbitrage and increase their capital efficiency. These activities are purported to distort global financial markets, erode national corporate tax bases, and are singularly targeted in the media. Despite this, MNEs continue to increase the dispersion of their tax haven activities by investing in multiple tax havens. We study how this dispersion affects home and host country productivity. We model the inward and outward offshore foreign direct investment (FDI) networks using longitudinal data on 212 countries. We find that increasing dispersion leads to productivity losses at home but productivity gains in the host country. Further, increasing the prominence of home and host countries in the offshore network, by connecting with central, well‐developed tax havens, improves their productivity.Managerial summaryIs offshore FDI routed through tax havens always unproductive to the MNEs' home and host countries? While governments attempt to contain such investments, MNE managers disperse them into multiple tax havens and continue benefitting from tax arbitrage. We show that all offshore FDI is not unproductive. As managers route their investments through multiple tax havens, their home countries may experience productivity losses, but the host countries receive productivity gains. Further, using central, well‐established tax havens bring productivity gains to both home and host countries. We thus show that MNEs' home countries need to reassess their offshore FDI policies since several of them also host these investments. Our paper extends a multilateral perspective on offshore FDI and possible benefits attainable, particularly from central tax havens.

The Relationships Between National Intellectual Capital and Foreign Direct Investment

Foreign direct investment (FDI) has a significant influence on economic development, productivity and competitiveness in host countries. Policymakers are eager to attract FDI. With the importance of the knowledge economy, intellectual capital becomes a critical determinant of FDI location choice. Thus, the study tries to understand the relationships between national intellectual capital (NIC) and FDI in host countries and to compare the differences between developed countries and developing countries. The study hypothesizes that each component of NIC (human capital, market capital, process capital, renewal capital and financial capital) is positively related to FDI. Moreover, in developed countries, human capital and renewal capital has more influence on FDI while in developing countries, market capital and process capital have more influence on FDI.
 The study uses data from United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) and Taiwan Intellectual Capital Research Center (TICRC). Because of data availability, the sample needs to be both included in the database of UNCTAD and TICRC during 2001 to 2018. The final sample consists of 59 countries which extends over the five continents. The study proceeds by using panel data, pooling 56 countries for the period from 2001 to 2019 after the Hausman test to determine whether there are fixed effects or random effects. A generalized least square (GLS) model is used to test the hypotheses with country-year data for FDI analysis.
 The results confirm that each dimension of NIC is positively related to inward FDI, indicating to the importance of NIC to attract inward FDI. In addition, national market capital, national process capital and national renewal capital have more influence on inward FDI in developing countries than in developed countries. Conclusions and practical suggestions are also provided.

FDI and firm productivity in host countries: The role of financial constraints

This paper studies the effect of FDI firms’ financial advantages on firm productivity in host countries and examines the related policy implications. If FDI firms face lower financing costs but have higher fixed production costs than local firms, a simple Melitz-type model predicts that FDI firms could have even lower cutoff productivity than local firms, especially in financially vulnerable sectors. The same mechanism will also lower the average productivity of FDI firms especially in financially vulnerable sectors, although FDI firms on average are still more productive than local firms. These predictions are supported by the Chinese firm-level data. Then, we study policy implications in a two-country model that resembles these empirical patterns. The counterfactual policy analysis shows that offering tax benefits to FDI firms could be counterproductive because it attracts FDI firms that are even less productive than local firms. The policy in the host country to improve its financial market efficiency could also hurt the country’s welfare because of the interaction between financial market reforms and the distortionary taxes imposed on local firms to finance FDI subsidies.

FDI and Firm Productivity in Host Countries: The Role of Financial Constraints

This paper studies the effect of FDI firms' financial advantages on firm productivity in host countries and examines the related policy implications. If FDI firms face lower financing costs but have higher fixed production costs than local firms, a simple Melitz-type model predicts that because of their financial advantages, FDI firms could have even lower cutoff productivity than local firms, especially in financially vulnerable sectors. The same mechanism will also lower the average productivity of FDI firms especially in financially vulnerable sectors, although FDI firms on average are still more productive than local firms. These predictions are supported by the Chinese firm-level data. Then, we study policy implications in a two-country model that resembles these empirical patterns. The counterfactual policy analysis shows that offering tax benefits to FDI firms could be counterproductive because it attracts FDI firms that are even less productive than local firms. The policy in the host country to improve its financial market efficiency could also hurt the country's welfare because of the interaction between financial market reforms and the distortionary taxes imposed on local firms to finance FDI subsidies.

How immigration affects investment and productivity in host and home countries

How immigration affects investment and productivity in host and home countries

The Effect of Mandatory Extraction Payment Disclosures on Corporate Payment and Investment Policies Abroad

ABSTRACTI examine how mandatory extraction payment disclosures (EPD)—a policy solution intended to discourage corporate payment avoidance in the oil, gas, and mining industries—affect fiscal revenue contributions and investments by multinational firms in foreign host countries. Using the staggered adoption of EPD across firms headquartered in Europe and Canada, I find that disclosing companies increase their payments to host governments, decrease investments, and obtain fewer extraction licenses relative to non‐disclosing competitors. These effects are stronger for firms that face a high risk of public shaming, operate in corrupt host countries, and have a high exposure to bribery‐prone payments, suggesting that EPD increases the reputational cost of corporate behavior that could be perceived as exploitative. The resulting reallocation of investments from disclosing to non‐disclosing firms reduces drilling productivity and resource production in host countries, consistent with uneven disclosure regulation distorting capital allocation.

Impact of China’s OFDI on Green Total Factor Productivity of Countries along the “Belt and Road”

FDI is an important channel for technical communication and a common method for pollution transfer. With the rapid growth in investment to the Belt and Road” region, how China’s OFDI affects the green total factor productivity of countries in that region is not only a common concern of the international community, but also directly determines whether the Green Belt and Road” initiative can be further advanced. In this paper, the directional distance function considering undesired output is used under the DEA framework, and the green total factor productivity of 56 countries in that region is measured by using the Global Malmquist-Luenberger productivity index. On this basis, the paper utilizes the two-way fixed effect model, quantile regression model and panel threshold regression model to test the effect of China’s OFDI on green total factor productivity of different countries. The paper concludes that: First, China’s OFDI has significantly promoted the growth of green total factor productivity in host countries, while the overall investment from other countries has significantly inhibited the growth of green total factor productivity in host countries. Second, by attracting China’s OFDI, absorbing and assimilating China’s advanced technologies, there has been a strong boost to the growth of green total factor productivity in the countries which rank the last 60% in the green total factor productivity; contrastively, for the top 40% countries, China’s direct investment has not promoted local green economic development significantly. Third, China’s OFDI has a threshold effect of economic scale and human capital on regional green total factor productivity, but the difference in infrastructure quality has not caused the nonlinear impact of China’s OFDI on the green total factor productivity of countries. Even so, promoting infrastructure construction will indeed help to strengthen the resource integration and accelerate the development of green economy in the Belt and Road” region, and this also reflects the value of the establishment of the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank under the Belt and Road” initiative. To sum up, this research not only positively responds to the doubts about China’s investment motives, and dispels the anxiety” of countries along the line, but also lays the foundation for China to establish the image of a responsible investment entity.

The impact of institutional quality on Chinese foreign direct investment in Africa

The purpose of this paper is to analyse the impacts of the host country institutional environment on Chinese foreign direct investment in Africa. As one of the few papers to explicitly address the role of institutions on China–Africa foreign direct investment, our results highlight that countries who are able to provide a politically stable environment and control levels of corruption exert the greatest effects on Chinese foreign direct investment. After controlling for firm level motivation, the findings also reveal that as Chinese economic development evolves so does the apparent strategic direction of their investment patterns with greater attention now being given to investment quality and return on investment, rather than simply acquiring and extracting natural resources. From a policy perspective, the findings suggest three areas of development to promote increases in, and the sustainability of Chinese investment in Africa. First, the implementation of mechanisms to better control levels of corruption. Second, the promotion of long-term political stability to reduce investor uncertainty, and third, increased investment in supply-side initiatives to boost host country productivity to reflect the changing nature of Chinese investment patterns in Africa.

Imported Inputs and Productivity Spillovers from Foreign Direct Investment

This paper considers how input market liberalization affects host country productivity spillovers from multinational corporation (MNC) investments. The standard “Backward Linkage” measure used to estimate technology and learning spillovers to local upstream suppliers — pioneered by Javorcik (2004) and replicated across several influential papers — implicitly assumes domestic and foreign firms share the same input structure. I show that this assumption constitutes an omitted variable bias of imported inputs in TFP spillover estimation. Using a novel Colombian firm panel that isolates imported from domestic inputs, mean backward linkage productivity spillovers reduce in half when the share of locally sourced inputs is adjusted to reflect MNCs’ observably higher propensity to import inputs. However in some industries, productivity spillovers increase in response to the adjustment. I demonstrate that the sign and magnitude of this bias are proportional to the elasticity of substitution between imported and domestic inputs. The results highlight how input market liberalization (usually associated with increased FDI inflows) can have important feedback effects on local productivity spillovers from MNCs.

Disclosure Regulation, Corruption, and Investment: Evidence from Natural Resource Extraction

I examine how mandatory extraction payment disclosures (EPD) ─ a policy solution intended to discourage corporate payment avoidance in the oil, gas, and mining industries ─ affect fiscal revenue contributions and investments by multinational firms in foreign host countries. Using the staggered adoption of EPD across firms headquartered in Europe and Canada, I find that disclosing companies increase their payments to host governments, decrease investments, and obtain fewer extraction licenses relative to non-disclosing competitors. These effects are stronger for firms that face a high risk of public shaming, operate in corrupt host countries, and have a high exposure to bribery-prone payments, suggesting that EPD increases the reputational cost of corporate behavior that could be perceived as exploitative. The resulting reallocation of investments from disclosing to non-disclosing firms reduces drilling productivity and resource production in host countries, consistent with uneven disclosure regulation distorting capital allocation.

Bilateral FDI Flows, Productivity Growth, and Convergence: The North vs. The South

Summary Controlling for the aggregation bias in FDI flows and the home and host country heterogeneity within and between Northern and Southern countries, we explore the effects of bilateral FDI flows on host country productivity growth, and on the productivity convergence dynamics between the host and the productivity-frontier country. Using bilateral FDI flows’ data from 108 host and 240 home countries over 1990–2012, and employing a variety of estimation techniques together with a rich battery of robustness tests, we find no significant effect of bilateral FDI flows on either host country productivity growth or on the productivity gap between the host and the frontier country. We also show that these findings are not sensitive to the direction of FDI flows, which are South-South, South-North, North-South or North-North. In a decomposition exercise, we also fail to find any significant effect of bilateral or aggregate FDI flows on physical capital growth. Yet, we find some evidence of a positive effect of FDI flows on human capital growth but just in one direction, South-South. Last but not least, we fail to find any productivity growth or convergence effect at the sectoral level, including agricultural, industry, or services sectors.

Cultural and Institutional Determinants of Bilateral Trade Flows

This paper studies the intangible costs of international trade by extending the basic gravity equation with measures of cultural and institutional distance, and institutional quality. Analyzing a sample of bilateral trade flows between 92 countries in 1999, we find that institutional distance has a negative effect on bilateral trade, presumably because the transaction costs of trade between partners from dissimilar institutional settings are high. In contrast, we find that cultural distance has a positive effect on bilateral trade. A potential explanation for this finding is that firms prefer trade to host-country production in culturally distant countries. Finally, we find that the institutional quality of both the importer and exporter increases the amount of bilateral trade.

How immigration affects investment and productivity in host and home countries

Migration policies need to consider how immigration affects investment behavior and productivity, and how these effects vary with the type of migration. College-educated immigrants may do more to stimulate foreign direct investment and research and development than low-skilled immigrants, and productivity effects would be expected to be highest for immigrants in scientific and engineering fields. By raising the demand for housing, immigration also spurs residential investment. However, residential investment is unlikely to expand enough to prevent housing costs from rising, which has implications for income distribution in society.

The Systemic Risk of Cross-Border Banking: Evidence from the Sudden Stop and Interbank Stress Contagion in East Asia

ABSTRACTThis article investigates the systemic risk of cross-border banking in East Asia. Using the recursive bivariate probit model, we jointly test the probability of the sudden stop in international lending and its simultaneous effect on the host countries’ interbank markets. The empirical results suggest that the risk of a sudden stop is associated with global liquidity shock; host country productivity shock; and the common lender contagion effect. This facilitates the transmission of interbank stress from advanced economies to emerging markets. However, the tension is mitigated by the “flight-home effect” caused by domestic investors’ repatriation. The sudden stop is more likely to occur in countries with lower financial openness but higher financial risk. Lending flows to the banking sectors are more sensitive to shocks than the flows to the non-bank private sectors.

Foreign Direct Investment, Technology Diffusion, and Host Country Productivity Growth

The principal objective of this paper is to ascertain whether foreign direct investment (FDI) has statistically significant effects on host countries’ economic performance, such as total factor productivity. Such effects are often referred to as FDI externalities or spillover effects. This paper attempts to evaluate whether these spillover effects depend on the sending countries’ income levels. Our empirical analysis shows that FDI exerts positive impacts on less developed countries. Further, we determine that the impacts of FDI from developed countries are more prevalent. So-called North-South effects were confirmed; however, we do not detect South-South effects. We also investigated the other channel, imports, and demonstrate its significant impacts on total factor productivity.

Technology diffusion and host–country productivity in South-South FDI flows

This paper investigates the effects of foreign direct investment (FDI) on the host country's economic performance, namely, its total factor productivity (TFP). Such effects are often referred to as FDI externalities or spillover effects. In addition, the paper examines whether such spillover effects depend on the home country's income level. Our empirical findings indicate that FDI flows have positive effects on less developed countries (South countries), and that the effect of FDI flows from the developed countries (North countries) is stronger than that from less developed countries. That is, these results confirm the so-called North-South effects but provide no evidence of South-South effects. Furthermore, another channel of spillover effects is imports, which have significant effects on TFP.

International production networks and host country productivity: evidence from Malaysia

In the 1990s, Malaysia, along with other East Asian countries, achieved rapid economic growth rates. Research has yet to ascertain the extent to which this rapid economic growth was due to the development of global production networks. The main objective of the paper is to examine the impact of international production fragmentation on productivity growth. The paper hypothesises that international production fragmentation increases productivity growth through trade and foreign direct investment, and that productivity growth increases due to skill‐intensive industries producing within an international production network.

Foreign entry and spillovers with technological incompatibilities in the supply chain

Does foreign entry improve host country productivity and welfare? Previous studies have looked at the role of backward linkages with domestic suppliers and their effects on domestic competitors. In this paper, we study how these externalities are affected by technological incompatibilities between foreign and domestic technologies. When foreign technologies require specialized inputs, some local suppliers self-select into production for multinational firms. A decrease in the cost of inputs compatible with the foreign technology has heterogeneous effects. It benefits foreign firms and the most productive downstream domestic firms that adopt the foreign technology, and negatively affects firms using the domestic technology. Technological incompatibilities reduce the welfare gains from openness to FDI, but this negative effect can be overcome by domestic technology adoption. The model's predictions are consistent with the stylized facts drawn from the empirical literature on FDI spillovers.

Foreign firms and host-country productivity: does the mode of entry matter?

Foreign direct investment is considered an important source of knowledge spillovers. We argue that the efiects of foreign presence on host country productivity may difier depending on the mode of foreign entry. Using a long panel from the Norwegian Manufacturing Census, we flnd that greenfleld entry both in the same industry and in the same labour market region has a negative impact on the productivity of domestic plants, while entry via acquisition afiects the productivity of domestic plants in the same industry positively. The positive efiect from acquisitions is consistent with knowledge spillovers as these plants have pre-established linkages within the industry. The negative efiects from greenfleld entry can be attributed to increased competition both in the product market and for qualifled employees in a tight labour market. This may help to explain the ambiguity of results in the empirical literature that relates overall foreign presence to host country productivity.