Technology Spillovers from Foreign Direct Investment (FDI): an Exploration of the Active Role of MNC Subsidiaries in the Case of Argentina in the 1990s

Anabel Marin () and Martin Bell ()
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Anabel Marin: SPRU, University of Sussex and Universidad Nacional de General Sarmiento (UNGS)
Martin Bell: SPRU, University of Sussex, http://www.sussex.ac.uk/spru/profile204.html

No 118, SPRU Working Paper Series from SPRU - Science Policy Research Unit, University of Sussex Business School

Abstract: The usual perspective on technology spillovers from FDI sees the MNC subsidiary as a passive actor. It presumes that the technological superiority that spreads from subsidiaries to other firms in the host economy is initially created outside it by MNC parent companies, and is delivered to subsidiaries via international technology transfer. The role of subsidiaries is little more than to act as a ‘leaky’ container lying between the technology transfer pipeline and the absorption of spillovers by domestic firms. This paper suggests a different model in which a substantial part of the potential for spillover is created within local subsidiaries as a result of their own knowledge-creating and accumulating activities in the host economy. We explore empirically the effects of these activities on technology spillovers from FDI using data for industrial firms in Argentina over the period 1992-1996. The analysis suggests that significant results can be obtained incorporating subsidiaries’ own technological activities as an explanatory variable of the spillover process.

Keywords: FDI; technology spillovers; absorptive capabilities; multinational enterprises; subsidiaries' technology behaviour (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 37 pages
Date: 2004-10-01
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:sru:ssewps:118

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