Multinational firms and productivity catching-up: the case of Chilean manufacturing

International Journal of Technological Learning, Innovation and Development

Volumn 1, Issue 2, 2007, Pages 136-152

  Alvarez, Roberto ^a   Crespi, Gustavo ^b  

^a CENTRAL BANK OF CHILE   (Chile)

^b Intl Development Res Centre (IDRC)   (Uruguay)

Author keywords

catching up; multinationals; productivity; technology transfer

Indexed keywords

EID: 78649591375     PISSN: 17531942     EISSN: 17531950     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1504/IJTLID.2007.015401     Document Type: Article

References (26)

1. Alvarez, R. and Lopez, R.A. (2005) ‘Exporting and performance: evidence from chilean plants’, Canadian Journal of Economics, Vol. 38, No. 4, pp.1384–1400.
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3. Bell, M. and Marin, A. (2006) ‘Technology spillovers from foreign direct investment (DFI): the active role of MNC subsidiaries in Argentina in the 1990s’, Journal of Development Studies, Vol. 42, No. 4, pp.678–697.
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7. Görg, H. and Strobl, E. (2001) ‘Multinational companies and productivity spillovers: a meta-analysis’, Economic Journal, Vol. 111, No. 475, pp.723–739.
8. Görg, H. and Strobl, E. (2005) ‘Spillovers from Foreign firms through worker mobility: an empirical investigation’, Scandinavian Journal of Economics, Vol. 107, No. 4, pp.693–709.
9. Griffith, R., Redding, S. and Simpson, H. (2006) Technological Catch-up and the Role of Multinationals, Available at: econ.lse.ac.ukmimeo.
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14. Peri, G. and Urban, D. (2006) ‘Catching-up to foreign technology? Evidence on the Veblen-Gerschenkron effect of foreign investments’, Regional Science and Urban Economics, Vol. 36, No. 1, pp.72–98.
15. Takii, S. (2005) ‘Productivity spillovers and characteristics of foreign multinational plants in Indonesian manufacturing 1990–1995’, Journal of Development Economics, Vol. 76, No. 2, pp.521–542.
16. The estimated productivity gains in the presence of distorted markets might not reflect true social productivity gains (see Griliches, 1998).
17. Profit maximising firms will respond to positive productivity shocks by expanding output, which requires additional inputs. Negative productivity shocks, will lead the firms to reduce outputs, decreasing their input usages.
18. Investment must determine the capital stock of the next period but not the capital stock in the current period.
19. In this paper a 3rd degree polynomial is used. LP notes that such a choice leads to estimated parameters that are very similar to more complicated locally weighted estimation.
20. We were interested on exporting activity, but the information for sales to foreign markets at plant-level is not available for the entire period. Alvarez and Lopez (2005) analyse the relationship between export and productivity for the period starting at 1990.
21. To save space in these tables we show the average at two-digit industries, but frontier plants are defined at three-digit industries.
22. The only exception is age, which turns out to affect negatively this probability.
23. See Görg and Strobl (2001) for a review of the empirical evidence on multinationals and productivity spillovers.
24. See, for example, Takii (2005).
25. The employment-driven productivity catch-up may be rationalised in terms of technology spillovers originated by worker mobility from multinationals to domestic firms. A theoretical model is developed by Fosfuri et al. (2001). For empirical evidence on this regard (see Görg and Strobl, 2005).
26. Some steps in these direction are taken by Bell and Marin (2006) in the context of Argentinean manufacturing.