Entry of Foreign Multinational Firms and Productivity Growth of Domestic Firms: An Empirical Analysis Based on the Firm-Level Data Underlying the Basic Survey on Business Structure and Activities(in Japanese)

Keiko Ito

Economic Analysis, 2013, vol. 186, 3-27

Abstract: This paper examines whether and how the entry of foreign multinational firms affects the productivity growth of domestically-owned firms, i.e., foreign direct investment (FDI) spillover effects, using a large-scale Japanese firm-level dataset including a large number of services firms. The results suggest that foreign presence in a particular industry does not generate positive spillover effects and both in manufacturing and service sector industries in fact tends to negatively affect the productivity growth of domestically-owned firms. Moreover, the negative FDI spillover effect tends to be larger in the service than in the manufacturing sector, implying that there may be systematic differences in FDI spillover effects between these sectors. However, the negative spillover effects are smaller for firms catching up towards the productivity frontier than for other firms, and in the long run, their productivity growth is positively associated with foreign presence in the same industry. Nevertheless, the overall effect of inward FDI is still negative and further investigation on which factors lead to positive FDI spillovers is desirable. A possible interpretation of these results is that foreign entry increases the productivity gap between firms with high productivity growth and other firms. If this interpretation is correct, the results suggest that to raise macro-level productivity growth, the promotion of inward FDI should be accompanied by policies to encourage firms with low productivity growth to accelerate their productivity growth or to force them to exit from the market.

Date: 2013
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