FDIs Productivity Spillovers in Regional Clusters: A Comparison between Poland and Romania [Effetti degli Ide sulla produttività delle imprese nazionali: un confronto tra Polonia e Romania]

In recent years Foreign Direct Investments (FDI) inflows towards Eastern European countries have progressively increased, further stimulated by the entrance of some countries in the European Union. A large strand of theoretical studies predicts that Multinational Enterprises (MNEs) serve as a very important source of technology transfer and, as a consequence, of productivity spillovers for the local firms of the host countries. However, despite the theoretical predictions, the empirical literature finds mixed evidence for the actual occurrence of such spillover effects. Many reasons have been put forward to offer a possible explanation such as, for example, the lack of absorptive capacity of local firms, the technology gap between MNEs and local firms, the FDI motivations. We contribute to this discussion by introducing the concept of regional clusters as industrial environments theoretically more prone to induce the spillover effect from MNEs to domestic firms. The aim of this paper is to investigate whether spillover effects occur more frequently in firms located within regional clusters, taking into account a general distinction between low-tech and high-tech sectors. We also control for the role of R&D intensity and firm¿s size for the capacity of firms to benefit from FDI spillovers. The econometric analysis is based on a sample of close to 6000 manufacturing firms comparing two transition countries, namely Romania and Poland. Our results show no evidence that location within regional clusters contributes to firms benefiting from FDI spillovers. In fact, our results for Romania show that, on the contrary, the productivity of firms located within regional clusters is influenced more negatively by the presence of MNEs than of firms located outside regional clusters. Furthermore, we find that FDI has in most cases negative impact on firm-level productivity, in line with previous findings of empirical studies on transition countries. When investigating the role of mediating factors, such as firms¿ absorptive capacity, we find that, as suggested by the literature, R&D intensity has an important role for the ability of firms to grasp spillovers from FDI. This is especially relevant in the case of Poland.

FRANCO Chiara;  KOZOVSKA Kornelia; 

2018-01-17

Franco Angeli

JRC59887

https://www.francoangeli.it/Riviste/Scheda_rivista.aspx?IDarticolo=41139,    https://publications.jrc.ec.europa.eu/repository/handle/JRC59887,   

10.3280/QU2010-004004,