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This paper aims to examine the impact of six possible foreign direct investment (FDI) spillover channels on the total factor productivity (TFP) of Chinese agricultural enterprises and investigate the moderating role of absorptive capacity (technological acumen) on TFP spillover effects.

Based on data from 118 agricultural and related Chinese industries, the authors employ a multithreshold regression model to empirically analyze the impact of FDI on the TFP of agricultural enterprises and the threshold effect of absorptive capacity. To overcome potential endogeneity problems, the authors select the FDI stock of corresponding USA industries and the industrial access policy index as instrumental variables and re-estimate the model.

The results suggest foreign-invested agricultural enterprises are more likely to benefit from FDI, while the “aggregate” FDI spillover effect is negative for domestic agricultural enterprises. However, once threshold effects are introduced, the authors find firms “close to” (“far from”) the technological frontier experience statistically significant positive (negative) spillover effects. Similar results are obtained for virtually all FDI spillover channels for firms in both upstream and downstream industries. FDI spillovers, when they occur, can be a two-edged sword – benefiting some firms at the expense of others.

The authors introduce six FDI spillover channels to examine the impact of FDI on the productivity of foreign-invested and domestic agricultural enterprises. Moreover, the authors analyze the threshold effect of firms' absorptive capacity. These findings can help formulate foreign investment introduction policies based on the characteristics of agricultural enterprises with different ownership structures. These results are also beneficial for agricultural enterprises to better exploit FDI spillover effects and improve their productivity.

Foreign direct investment (FDI) provides a source of new technologies, processes, products, and management skills. Thus, the inflow of foreign knowledge and technology though FDI may lead to technological spillovers to the local economy resulting in higher productivity and overall economic growth. Over the years, there have existed many FDIs in Nigeria in the form of multinational companies (MNCs), especially in food industry. The purpose of this paper is to assess the various forms of technological spillovers from MNCs to domestic small and medium food companies (SMFCs) in Nigeria, with a view to determining their nature and extent.

The study employed a multi‐stage sampling method. First, three States from Southwestern Nigeria, where the activities of MNCs are prominent, were purposively chosen. Then, five sub‐sectors of food companies, where the majority of domestic food companies are represented were selected; out of which 200 food companies were chosen for the study through stratified random sampling technique. The primary data were collected through structured questionnaire administered on the selected companies, to elicit information on the various forms of technological spillovers that had taken place.

The various forms of spillovers from the MNCs to the domestic SMFCs in Nigeria were linkages, investment in human capital, and labour turnover. Most of the SMFCs indicated linkages with MNCs, and the relationship was mainly forward type. About 50 per cent and 7 per cent domestic SMFCs benefitted from the training opportunities and from technical assistance from MNCs, respectively. Also, 37.5 per cent of the owner managers had working experience from MNCs in the areas of research and development, production or operation, quality control, and administration. The changes effected in their production technology included embarking on more efficient production and efficient use of existing resources.

Previous studies on technological spillover measured spillovers in terms of productivity gains rather than through technological learning, capability building, and linkages activities. The paper re‐conceptualises technological spillover from MNCs by linking the spillover occurrence to the technological changes associated with the production capability.

This chapter estimates heterogeneous productivity growth and spatial spillovers through industrial linkages in the United States and China from 1981 to 2010. The authors employ a spatial Durbin stochastic frontier model and estimates with a spatial weight matrix based on inter-country input–output linkages to describe the spatial interdependencies in technology. The authors estimate productivity growth and spillovers at the industry level using the World KLEMS database. The spillovers of factor inputs and productivity growth are decomposed into domestic and international effects. Most of the spillover effects are found to be significant and the spillovers of productivity growth offered and received provide detailed information reflecting interdependence of the industries in the global value chain (GVC). The authors use this model to evaluate the impact of a US–Sino decoupling of trade links based on simulations of four scenarios of the reductions in bilateral intermediate trade. Their estimation results and their simulations are as mentioned based on date that ends in 2010, as this is the only KLEMS data available for these countries at this level of industrial disaggregation. As the GVC linkages between the United States and China have expanded since the end of their sample period their results can be viewed as informative in their own right for this period as well as possible lower bounds on the extent of the spillovers generated by an expanding GVC.

Aim of the present monograph is the economic analysis of the role of MNEs regarding globalisation and digital economy and in parallel there is a reference and examination of some legal aspects concerning MNEs, cyberspace and e‐commerce as the means of expression of the digital economy. The whole effort of the author is focused on the examination of various aspects of MNEs and their impact upon globalisation and vice versa and how and if we are moving towards a global digital economy.

Although the theoretical arguments provide several channels through which innovation affects export, empirical validation of this relationship is scarce. Further, the impact of the diverse channels of domestic and foreign research and development (R&D) on export is assessed in isolation by previous studies. This paper empirically investigates the impact of technological innovation on export capacity and intensity of industrial enterprises in emerging countries by considering three channels of domestic innovation and foreign R&D spillovers, namely internal R&D, embodied knowledge and disembodied knowledge in a unified framework.

Data on China's industrial enterprises in the manufacturing sector are extracted from the China National Bureau of Statistics (NBSC), the Ministry of Science and Technology of China (MST) and the UN Comtrade database for the period from 1998 to 2020. The instrumental variables two-stage least squares (IV-2SLS) and three-stage least squares (IV-3SLS) methods are used to control for the possible endogeneity bias and the problem of cross-equation correlation between residuals.

The results show that internal R&D is a critical factor to enhance the export performance of enterprises in emerging countries, while the effect of embodied spillovers and public–private collaboration on export capacity and intensity of industrial enterprises is substantial. Further, disembodied knowledge that is acquired through licensing of technology from advanced countries does not directly contribute to the export performance of enterprises but requires a threshold level of internal R&D capability. This study’s results also report a greater effect of embodied knowledge spillovers on export capacity and export intensity than internal R&D in emerging countries. The results are consistent to changes in the sample period and the estimation methods. The findings of the paper suggest that developing countries can speed up the process of export upgrading by relying on both domestic and foreign R&D efforts.

The findings would help policymakers to keep in mind the relative importance of internal R&D and embodied and disembodied knowledge spillovers for export performance before formulating a catch-up strategy and the outcome would encourage them to consider prior related knowledge in terms of internal R&D capability while acquiring external technology.

This study fills the gap in the existing literature by providing empirical validation of the innovation–export interplay and simultaneously assessing the effect of three diverse channels of technological innovation on the export performance of industrial enterprises. This paper enunciates important policy lessons for emerging countries' smooth transition to a knowledge-based economy.

The main purpose of this paper is to explore whether the nature of innovation is accumulative or radical and to what extent past year accumulation of technology stock can predict future innovation. More importantly, the authors are concerned with whether a change of policy regime or a variance in the quality of technology will moderate the nature of innovation.

The authors examined a dataset of 3.6 million Chinese patents during 1985–2015 and constructed more than 5 million citation pairs across 8 sections and 128 classes to track knowledge spillover across technology fields. The authors used this citation dataset to calculate the technology innovation network. The authors constructed a measure of upstream invention, interacting the pre-existing technology innovation network with historical patent growth in each technology field, and estimated measure's impact on future innovation since 2005. The authors also constructed three sets of metrics – technology dependence, centrality and scientific value – to identify innovation quality and a policy dummy to consider the impact of policy on innovation.

Innovation growth is built upon past year accumulation and technology spillover. Innovation grows faster for technologies that are more central and grows more slowly for more valuable technologies. A pro-innovation and pro-intellectual property right (IPR) policy plays a positive and significant role in driving technical progress. The authors also found that for technologies that have faster access to new information or larger power to control knowledge flow, the upstream and downstream innovation linkage is stronger. However, this linkage is weaker for technologies that are more novel or general. On most occasions, the nature of innovation was less responsive to policy shock.

This paper contributes to the debate on the nature of innovation by determining whether upstream innovation has strong predictive power on future innovation. The authors develop the assumption used in the technology spillover literature by considering a time-variant, directional and asymmetric matrix to model technology diffusion. For the first time, the authors answer how the nature of innovation will vary depending on the technology network configurations and policy environment. In addition to contributing to the academic debate, the authors' study has important implications for economic growth and industrial or innovation management policies.

This paper aims to examine production linkage and technology spillovers due to the presence of foreign firms in the Indian pharmaceutical industry.

This study employs the semi‐parametric estimation method suggested by Olley and Pakes to control for unobserved firm heterogeneity that accounts for the endogeneity of input selection with respect to productivity.

The results suggest that R&D activities of foreign firms lead to positive technology spillover to local firms. However, we also found negative linkage from the activities of foreign firms. The negative linkage could be explained by the large reverse engineering activities that occur on existing drugs in the Indian pharmaceutical industry, where the enclave activities of foreign firms might be a preemptive strategy to reduce the flow of technologies to downstream local firms and to protect their firm‐specific (product) technology.

The results provide support for strong institutional arrangements such as giving protection for Intellectual Property Rights, which might be important for attracting and creating linkages with activities of foreign firms in the host country.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the effects of different kinds of merger and acquisitions (M&As) on domestic industries’ productivity in the form of technological change (TC) and efficiency change (EC) in the Brazilian extracting and processing industries.

Panel data analysis is employed to test the impact of different kinds of M&As spillovers on each component of productivity growth. The database contains data collected from 2007 to 2011 referring to the Brazilian industries. The estimation procedure involves two stages. The first stage decomposes TFP growth into EC and TC using a input-based Malmquist Productivity Index. In the second step, EC and TC indexes are used interchangeably as a dependent variable in panel data regressions on the M&As-spillover variables.

The results indicate a positive relationship between TC and M&As made by Brazilian majority capital acquiring foreign-held capital from a company established abroad, which is consistent with reverse spillover theory. They also suggest an inverse relationship between TC and M&A operations made by companies with foreign majority capital acquiring both Brazilian-held capital and foreign-held capital from a company established in Brazil. Only the sectors that are capable of increasing their productivity via TC are able to benefit from technology transfer.

This study is limited by the extent of data aggregation applied, which did not identify M&A transaction effects at the firm level. The available data do not allow isolating the effects of M&A processes on industry performance, given the co-occurrence of several factors that affect the performance of the industry. The study results imply that public managers must remain cognizant of the critical need to preserve and maximize competition between foreign and domestic firms while promoting a competitive environment that encourages the development of domestic technological capacities and skilled human capital.

M&A processes raise important issues with respect to organizational decisions and industrial policy. Studies of M&A transactions may be of fundamental importance to the expansion of healthy companies as they evolve through successive stages of growth and development. Liberalizing regulations to promote M&A transactions, and corporate market control is only justified if it promotes social welfare and economic development. Understanding the complexity and dynamics of this phenomenon and appreciating the heterogeneity of possible outcomes can lead to more relevant discussion regarding their contributions.

Results found in this study indicate the need for greater efforts to understand how M&A operations, especially those associated to foreign-held capital, interact with local owned enterprises in developing economies and what benefits can be achieved through public policy. M&A operations need to be well evaluated by considering the kinds and intensities of externalities they might generate, whether and how local firms can potentially internalize those gains, building up absorptive capacities in order to achieve productivity spillover gains.

This study not only offers a more accurate understanding of the diverse nature and effects of M&A operations, but also stimulates a more relevant public policy discussion related to both foreign direct investment and OFDI incentives in Brazil. The growing economic importance of the activities of developing emerging countries’ multinational enterprises is making governments more inclined to re-evaluate their political strategies. Indeed, governments are beginning to recognize that markets need to be created, monitored and nurtured.

This paper aims to examine spillover effects of heterogenous foreign direct investment (FDI) enterprises (domestic vs. export-oriented) through horizontal and vertical linkages and absorptive capacity effect on domestic firms' total factor productivity (TFP). It clarifies the spillover effect on domestic firms in accordance with industrial zones, business size, technology sector and geographical agglomeration, respectively.

The dataset used is based on Vietnamese manufacturing firms during 2011–2014, input–output (I–O) Table 2012. This paper is conducted in two steps: (1) TFP is estimated by using a semi-parametric approach developed by Levinsohn and Petrin (2003); (2) Regression with panel data for domestic firms, applying the fixed effect method.

In terms of domestic-oriented FDI (DFDI) enterprise group: TFP spillover through horizontal linkages is found negative for domestic firms but positive for those participating in export. Additionally, backward linkages have a negative impact on TFP for most domestic enterprises, except for those operating in the high-tech sector. In terms of export-oriented FDI (EFDI) enterprise group, horizontal linkages have a negative impact on domestic firms' TFP including domestic ones participating in export whereas backward linkage is an important channel with positive effects. Absorptive capacity enables firms to improve productivity through linkages with EFDI and DFDI enterprises. Exporters located in industrial zones or regions with numerous exporters can receive better impacts through backward linkages EFDI.

Comprehensively, this is the first paper to detect FDI heterogeneity in their behavior when entering a developing country like Vietnam. The added value in this study comes from the export ability of local firms which is in line with Melitz (2003) theory that they can excel in absorping the TFP spillover from competing with DFDI competitors or from supplying to EFDI enterprises. Moreover, the role of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), low technology, high technology and learning by regions affecting the impact through both horizontal and vertical linkages are included for analysis.

This paper argues that multinational firms can benefit from indigenous knowledge diffusion in a host developing country so that there can be two‐way productivity spillovers between foreign and local firms even in the developing world. This new argument is confirmed by a very large firm‐level data set from the Chinese manufacturing sector. After grouping firms based on their trade orientation, we find that foreign firms have a positive impact on local‐market‐oriented Chinese firms. When the degree of foreign presence is sufficiently high, there will be negative productivity effects on export‐oriented Chinese firms. On the other hand, local Chinese firms have a positive impact on export‐oriented foreign invested firms. After dividing foreign firms according to their sources, we find that the beneficial spillovers between OECD and local Chinese firms are much greater than those between Hong Kong/Macao/Taiwan and local Chinese firms.