Collecting the Pieces of the FDI Knowledge Spillovers Puzzle

By R. Smeets. 2008

353 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Recent surveys of the empirical literature have concluded that the evidence is mixed on the magnitude, direction, and even existence of knowledge spillovers from Foreign Direct Investment (FDI). This article reviews the recent theoretical and empirical literature that responds to these inconclusive results and considers three main issues: spillover channels, mediating factors, and FDI heterogeneity. Studies that take into account individual spillover channels find robust evidence of knowledge spillovers from FDI. Studies on the importance of mediating factors and FDI heterogeneity are less conclusive and could benefit from greater convergence in methodologies and greater specificity in the spillover channels of interest. More generally, many studies do not properly distinguish between knowledge spillovers and knowledge transfers, and empirical studies seem to greatly outnumber theoretical studies.

Subfields: Economics and Econometrics, Strategy and Management

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/ac801e00d7c9e57b7399a6a1047e48a1332b7ada

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Citations in the corpus

Economic upgrading through global value chain participation: which policies increase the value-added gains? (2017, background): “Numerous studies on horizontal FDI spillovers have followed since, showing ambiguous effects of FDI on domestic productivity (see, for extensive literature reviews, Görg and Greenaway 2004; Lipsey and Sjöholm 2005; Smeets 2008, among others).”
A Meta-Analysis of FDI and Productivity Spillovers in Developing Countries (2017, background): “This is partly due to the demand from editors and reviewers that applied econometric studies should report multiple models, methods and estimates to ensure authors’ main findings are robust (Stanley and Doucouliagos 2012). This may lead to a best-set, average-set or all-set Metadata8. Following the ”
Linkages and spillovers in global production networks: firm-level analysis of the Czech automotive industry (2016, background): “The lack of consensus on FDI spillovers also reflects the fact that FDI effects on host economies depend on a large number of different factors, such as FDI characteristics, the size of host country firms, the nature of vertical linkages between foreign and domestic firms, worker mobility, the techn”
Determinants of Horizontal Spillovers from FDI: Evidence from a Large Meta-Analysis (2013, background): “Building on the narrative surveys of the FDI spillover literature (Crespo & Fontoura, 2007; Smeets, 2008) and on the recent research concerning the factors that may determine the magnitude of horizontal spillovers, we compile a list of the potential spillover determinants that can be examined in a m”
Does Foreign Direct Investment Lead to Productivity Spillovers? Firm Level Evidence from Indonesia (2009, result): “Some studies, however, argue that the mixed findings may be attributed to domestic firms’ characteristics or host countries’ ability to absorb productivity spillovers (Gorg & Greenaway, 2004; Smeets, 2008).”
Foreign multinationals and domestic innovation: Intra-industry effects and firm heterogeneity (2015, background): “Demonstration effects rely on the benefits arising from the exposure of domestic firms to the superior technology of MNEs subsidiaries (Girma et al., 2001; Gorg and Greenaway, 2004; Crespo and Fontoura, 2007; Smeets, 2008).”
Does FDI Bring Good Jobs to Host Countries? (2012, background): “…inability of the empirical literature to distinguish between knowledge spillovers and competitive externalities explains why surveys of the literature on intraindustry spillovers conclude that the existing results are mixed (Görg and Strobl 2001; Saggi 2002; Görg and Greenaway 2004; Smeets 2008).”
Technology transfers, foreign investment and productivity spillovers (2015, background): “In his overview of the literature on FDI spillovers in developing countries, Smeets (2008) points out that technology transfers and technology spillovers are distinct, albeit related, concepts, which should be treated as such in empirical analysis.”
Cross sectoral FDI spillovers and their impact on manufacturing productivity (2018, background): “…and potential for spillovers (Blalock and Simon, 2009, Damijan et al., 2013: Javorcik and Spatareanu, 2011; Ha and Giroud, 2015), the difficulty of disentangling unintentional knowledge spillovers from intentional knowledge diffusion (Smeets, 2008), and competition effects (Garcia et al., 2013).”
Estimating vertical spillovers from FDI: Why results vary and what the true effect is (2011, methodology): “We employed the following strategy for literature search: After reviewing the references of literature surveys (Görg & Greenaway, 2004; Smeets, 2008; Meyer & Sinani, 2009) and a few recent empirical studies, we elaborated a baseline search query that was able to capture most of the relevant studies.”