International Investment Location Decisions: The Case of Korean firms into China

Recent literature maintains there are at least two explanations for the motivations of FDI, one involving trade barriers (horizontal-FDI) and the other factor proportions hypothesis (vertical-FDI). The first view is that multinationals act in order to overcome trade barrier, and the second view is that multinationals arise to take advantage of international factor price differences. The purpose of this paper is to study the motivations of Korean foreign direct investment in China. Using the panel data on Korean FDI in China for the years 1988~2002, we examined the geographic determinants of direct investment in China from Korean firms. In doing so, we investigated, on the one hand, to what extent multinational activity is consistent with the factor proportions theory, i.e., to what extent multinational activity is related to cheap factor supplies. On the other hand, we study the market access motivation for multinational activity. Our econometric results suggest that factor proportions hypothesis is indeed the dominant influence on investor calculations for the early period of Korean FDI in China. Since end of 1990s, however, market-seeking FDI pattern is more common than FDI motivated by factor price differentials. We also find that the hypothesis that good-quality infrastructure is conducive to attracting FDI is not supported for Korean firms. Evidence supports the claim that regions with high degree of reform, which implement preferential treatments to foreign investors, still have advantage over other regions in attracting FDI. In sum, the findings in this paper indicate that Korean FDI for the early period of KorRecent literature maintains there are at least two explanations for the motivations of FDI, one involving trade barriers (horizontal-FDI) and the other factor proportions hypothesis (vertical-FDI). The first view is that multinationals act in order to overcome trade barrier, and the second view is that multinationals arise to take advantage of international factor price differences. The purpose of this paper is to study the motivations of Korean foreign direct investment in China. Using the panel data on Korean FDI in China for the years 1988~2002, we examined the geographic determinants of direct investment in China from Korean firms. In doing so, we investigated, on the one hand, to what extent multinational activity is consistent with the factor proportions theory, i.e., to what extent multinational activity is related to cheap factor supplies. On the other hand, we study the market access motivation for multinational activity. Our econometric results suggest that factor proportions hypothesis is indeed the dominant influence on investor calculations for the early period of Korean FDI in China. Since end of 1990s, however, market-seeking FDI pattern is more common than FDI motivated by factor price differentials. We also find that the hypothesis that good-quality infrastructure is conducive to attracting FDI is not supported for Korean firms. Evidence supports the claim that regions with high degree of reform, which implement preferential treatments to foreign investors, still have advantage over other regions in attracting FDI. In sum, the findings in this paper indicate that Korean FDI for the early period of Korean FDI in China is consistent with motives related to the factor proportions hypothesis, which explains that one of the determinants of FDI is to exploit the cheap labor of this country. On the other hand, recently motives related to horizontal FDI are more common.