Foreign direct investment and productivity spillovers: is China different?

ABSTRACT

Drawing on a unique dataset from 41 studies on foreign direct investment productivity spillovers in China, our prime objective is to estimate spillover effects accounting for publication bias using meta-regression analysis. Robust to different specifications, we find that the publication bias-corrected horizontal/backward/forward spillover effects are consistently positive and economically significant. Interestingly, our findings show that China gains more horizontal and backward spillover effects than the average world.

KEYWORDS:

• Foreign direct investment
• productivity spillover effects
• meta-regression analysis
• publication bias

JEL CLASSIFICATION:

• C80
• F21
• F23

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

¹ Among the 41 selected studies, 37 are journal articles, 3 are working paper, and 1 is Ph.D dissertation. The list of primary studies can be found in Appendix Table A1.

² A sensitivity meta-analysis with outliers included based on FAT-PET-MRA is also conducted; see Appendix Table A2. The signs of corrected horizontal spillover effects become negative, however, to some extent the corrected backward and forward spillover effects are in line with the corresponding results in Table 2.

Additional information

Funding

This research was supported by National Natural Science Foundation of China (71603093) and Joint Research Program (Phase II) of Institute of Finance of China Development Bank & Huazhong University of Science and Technology; Joint Research Program (Phase II) of Institute of Finance of China Development Bank & Huazhong University of Science and Technology.