Joining and exiting the value chain of foreign multinationals and performance of their local suppliers: evidence from interfirm transaction data

This paper investigates the productivity effects for domestic suppliers from joining and exiting the value chains of foreign-owned multinational enterprises (MNEs). Our econometric analysis is based on firm-to-firm transactions recorded in the value-added tax declarations’ data from Estonia and use of propensity score matching and difference-in-difference regression approach. The treatment analysis based on period 2015–2019 suggests that starting to supply the foreign-owned firms initially boosts the value added per employee of the domestic firms, including the effects on the scale of production and the capital–labor ratio. These first linkages to the foreign-owned MNEs do not affect the total factor productivity (TFP) of domestic firms, suggesting that the TFP effects take time to materialize. We find no significant positive effects on the second-tier suppliers: the positive effects are limited to the first-tier suppliers with direct links to foreign-owned firms. One novel result is the evidence that the productivity of suppliers does not fall, on average, after decreasing or ending supplier relationships with the foreign-owned firms. However, this average effect hides significant heterogeneity. Domestic firms with prior high levels of productivity and those at the time of exit from the MNE relationship start to export, gain in productivity in next periods, whereas the firms with low prior productivity levels lose.