Impact of direct foreign investment on exports of domestic firms in Poland

In the paper, the impact of the operation of international corporations on the exports of domestic firms is investigated in the regional context. One of the often mentioned advantages accompanying the inflow of direct foreign investment to countries undergoing systemic transformation is the role that the foreign firms can play in facilitating the domestic firms access to international markets. For the purposes of empirical verification of the above proposition, data on the Polish industry were used to ascertain whether and to which extent a regional concentration of exports by firms with foreign capital participation exerts a substantial impact on the exports of domestic firms. Irrespective of the adopted specification and estimated regression equations, as well as of the estimation techniques used, the existence of a positive and statistically meaningful relationship between the concentration of export operations by foreign firms and the exports of firms owned exclusively by Polish investors was confirmed.