Heterogeneity in the Effects of FDI on Firms’ Productivity in South Korea: A Quantile Regression Approach

Abstract

This study analyzes how heterogeneous across firms’ productivity level the effects of foreign direct investment (FDI) on the productivity of firms in a host country are. The study uses firm level data over 2000~2009 in South Korea and takes a quantile regression approach to estimate FDI’s heterogeneous effects on the invested firm (‘direct effects’) and other domestic firms in the industry to which the invested firm belongs (‘intra-industry spillover effects’). Major empirical results are as follows. In manufacturing sector, FDI has positive and statistically significant direct effects on the invested firm. In addition, the higher the quantiles of firms’ productivity level are, the larger the positive productivity effects are. FDI also has positive and statistically significant intra-industry spillover effects on domestic firms in low quantiles of productivity while it has negative and statistically significant or insignificant spillover effects on those in high productivity quantiles. In service sector, on the other hand, Sufficient evidence is not found that FDI has statistically significant direct effects or intra-industry spillover effects. Taken together, the study suggests that FDI has heterogeneous effects on the productivity of firms in host country, depending on the firms’ productivity level and sector.

Keywords

• 외국인직접투자(Foreign Direct Investment)
• 생산성(Productivity)
• 분위회귀(Quantile Regression)