During the past two decades many economies have opened their retail sector to foreign direct investment, yet little is known about possible implications of such liberalization on the economies of developing host countries. Using firm-level data from Romania, this study examines how the presence of global retail chains affects firms in the supplying industries. Applying a difference-in-differences method, the econometric analyses yield the following conclusions. The expansion of global retail chains leads to a significant increase in the total factor productivity in the supplying industries. Their presence in a region increases the total factor productivity of firms in the supplying industries by 15.2 percent and doubling the number of chains leads to a 10.8 percent increase in total factor productivity. However, the expansion benefits larger firms the most and has a much smaller impact on small enterprises. This conclusion is robust to several extensions and specifications, including the instrumental variable approach. These results suggest that the opening of the retail sector to foreign direct investment may stimulate productivity growth in upstream manufacturing and extend our understanding of foreign direct investment in service sectors.
Download Info
To download:
If you experience problems downloading a file, check if you have the
proper application to
view it first. Information about this may be contained
in the File-Format links below. In case of further problems read
the IDEAS help
page. Note that these files are not on the IDEAS
site. Please be patient as the files may be large.
As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to look for a different version under "Related research" (further below) or search for a different version of it.
Publisher Info
Paper provided by C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers in its series CEPR Discussion Papers with number
6906.
Find related papers by JEL classification: F21 - International Economics - - International Factor Movements and International Business - - - International Investment; Long-Term Capital Movements F23 - International Economics - - International Factor Movements and International Business - - - Multinational Firms; International Business
This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:
References listed on IDEAS Please report citation or reference errors to , or , if you are the registered author of the cited work, log in to your RePEc Author Service profile, click on "citations" and make appropriate adjustments.:
Did you know? You can create a compilation of all publications of a group of people, say alumni of a program, your students or memers of an association.