文档介绍：Regional Science and Urban Economics 37 (2007) 399–412
ate/regec
Local productivity spillovers from foreign direct
investment in the . electronics industry
⁎
Sourafel Girma , Katharine Wakelin
Nottingham University Business School, Jubilee Campus, Wollaton Road, Nottingham, NG8 1BB, United Kingdom
Accepted 6 November 2006
Available online 23 January 2007
Abstract
The paper examines whether productivity spillovers from foreign direct investment are geographically
limited. Using plant-level data from the . electronics sector, it finds robust evidence of both intra-
industry and inter-industry spillovers from regional FDI. By contrast, it fails to establish any discernible
relationship between domestic plant's productivity and FDI outside the region.
© 2006 Elsevier . All rights reserved.
JEL classification: F23; R58; C14
Keywords: Foreign direct investment; Production functions; Spillovers; Regional development
1. Introduction
The purpose of this paper is to examine empirically whether productivity spillovers from
foreign direct investment are geographically limited, using plant-level data from the .
electronics sector. A significant proportion of Regional Selective Assistance (RSA) – the main
form of regional subsidy in the . – goes to foreign-owned firms (over 40% in the early 1990s
according to Taylor and Wren, 1997). One prominent motivation for offering such incentives to
foreign firms is the presumption that they stimulate aggregate productivity growth either directly
through their own higher productivity growth or through an indirect spillover effect. It is therefore
important to subject this optimistic prognosis by policy makers to systematic empirical
investigation.
We concentrate on the electronics sector because total factor productivity (TFP) externalities
from FDI are expected to be high in view of the fact that multinational enterprises (MNEs)
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