Firm-level data for the Czech Republic (1992-96) suggest that foreign investments had a positive impact on recipient firms'total factor productivity (TFP) growth. This result is robust to corrections for the sample-selection bias that prevails because foreign investment tends to go to firms with above-average productivity performance. This result is not surprising, given the presumption that foreign investors transfer new technologies and knowledge to partner firms. With some lag, this is likely to be reflected in greater TFP growth. Foreign direct investment appears to have a greater impact on TFP growth than joint ventures, suggesting that parent firms are transferring more know-how (soft or hard) to affiliates than joint venture firms get from their partners. Joint ventures and foreign direct investment together appear to have a negative spillover effect on firms that do not have foreign partnerships. This effect is relatively large and statistically significant. But if the focus is restricted to the impact of foreign-owned affiliates (foreign direct investment) on all other firms in an industry, the magnitude of the negative effect becomes much smaller and loses statistical significance. This result, together with the fact that joint ventures and foreign direct investment together account for significant shares of total output in many industries, suggests that more research is needed to determine how much knowledge diffuses from firms with strong links to foreign firms to firms that do not have such links. Especially important is the extent of spillovers among joint venture firms and between foreign affiliates and firms with joint ventures. Insofar as joint venture firms invest in technological capacity (as suggested by their training efforts), those firms could be expected to be better able to absorb and benefit from the diffusion of know-how. The absence of such capacity may underlie the observed negative spillover effect on other firms in the industry. Longer time series and collection of data on variables that measure firms'in-house technological effort would help identify the magnitude and determinants of technological spillovers.
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Grossman, Gene M. & Helpman, Elhanan, 1995.
"Technology and trade,"
Handbook of International Economics,
in: G. M. Grossman & K. Rogoff (ed.), Handbook of International Economics, edition 1, volume 3, chapter 25, pages 1279-1337
Elsevier.
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Gene M. Grossman & Elhanan Helpman, 1994.
"Technology and Trade,"
NBER Working Papers
4926, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
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Coe, David T & Helpman, Elhanan & Hoffmaister, Alexander W, 1997.
"North-South R&D Spillovers,"
Economic Journal,
Royal Economic Society, vol. 107(440), pages 134-49, January.
[Downloadable!] (restricted)
Other versions:
David T. Coe & Elhanan Helpman & Alexander Hoffmaister, 1995.
"North-South R&D Spillovers,"
NBER Working Papers
5048, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
[Downloadable!] (restricted)
Craig Burnside & Martin Eichenbaum & Sergio Rebelo, 1995.
"Sectoral Solow Residuals,"
NBER Working Papers
5286, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
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Cited by: (explanations, 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.) This item has more than 25 citations. To prevent cluttering this page, these citations are listed on a separate page.