Financial constraints on export market exit of domestic firms versus foreign multinational corporation subsidiaries in South Korea

ABSTRACT

Using a Korean manufacturing firm-level data set covering a range of years from 2006 to 2013, this study investigates how the financial condition of firms, such as liquidity, leverage, and cash flow ratio, affects exit from export markets. It also analyses whether the financial status of foreign multinational corporation (MNC) subsidiaries differs from that of domestic firms with respect to the hazard of export market exit, especially during a global financial crisis. The empirical results confirm that, for domestic firms, the hazard of export market exit is affected by the firms’ financial condition only during a financial crisis. In other words, the financial vulnerability of domestic firms increases during the crisis, resulting in the hazard of export market exit. However, financial situations for foreign MNC subsidiaries do not affect exits from export markets, indicating a ‘finance-factor comparative advantage’.

KEYWORDS:

• Global financial crisis
• financial constraint
• hazard of export market exit
• foreign multinational corporations

JEL CLASSIFICATION:

• F10
• G30
• G32

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

¹ They are defined as firms with more than 50% of their equity owned by foreigners following the OECD definition.

² No sufficient statistic exists to allow the fixed effects to be conditioned out of the likelihood (STATA).

³ Financial variables which are not strictly exogenous treatment variables, can result in the limitations in identification.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Ministry of Education of the Republic of Korea and the National Research Foundation of Korea (NRF-2016S1A5A8019388)