Economic Policy Uncertainty, Outward Foreign Direct Investments, and Green Total Factor Productivity: Evidence from Firm-Level Data in China

Yuegang Song, Feng Hao, Xiazhen Hao and Giray Gözgör
Additional contact information
Yuegang Song: School of Business, Henan Normal University, Xinxiang 453007, China
Feng Hao: School of Economics, Tianjin University of Commerce, Tianjin 300134, China
Xiazhen Hao: School of Business, Henan Normal University, Xinxiang 453007, China

Sustainability, 2021, vol. 13, issue 4, 1-16

Abstract: This paper uses Chinese firm-level data to investigate the effect of China’s outward foreign direct investment (OFDI) on green total factor productivity (GTFP) under economic policy uncertainties (EPU). We found a significant positive impact of OFDI on GTFP. Moreover, an increase in EPU was shown to decrease GTFP. We also found that OFDI positively contributes to GTFP for private firms and foreign-invested firms in China. Technology-seeking OFDI contributes greater to GTFP than resource-seeking OFDI and market-seeking OFDI. These results remain robust when considering OFDI from firms in Central and East China as well as Western China. The findings are also robust with green labor productivity (GLP) substituting for GTFP using different econometric techniques. We also discuss potential implications in enhancing green innovation performance and sustainable industrial development in China.

Keywords: sustainable industrial development; green total factor productivity; outward foreign direct investments; economic policy uncertainty; Chinese economy (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O13 Q Q0 Q2 Q3 Q5 Q56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (29)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/13/4/2339/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/13/4/2339/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jsusta:v:13:y:2021:i:4:p:2339-:d:503409

Access Statistics for this article

Sustainability is currently edited by Ms. Alexandra Wu

More articles in Sustainability from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().