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Further research project
Innovation and Entrepreneurship Research

Foreign Investment and Domestic Productivity: Identifying Knowledge Spillovers and Competition Effects

We study the impact of FDI on the productivity of host-country firms. FDI has positive spillovers only when foreign and domestic firms use similar technologies. Channeling FDI to sectors where firms share similar technology would signicantly increase productivity spillovers from FDI. We show that inventor mobility across sectors is a key channel of technology transfer. To deal with endogeneity concerns we control for sectoral productivity growth, construct a Bartik-style instrument based on the productivity growth of neighboring countries, and exploit differences in knowledge flows across sectors captured by an asymmetric patent citation matrix.

Persons

Members

Prof. Christian Fons-Rosen, Ph.D. (MPI and Universitat Pompeu Fabra),
Prof. Dr. Sebnem Kalemli-Ozcan (University of Maryland),
Prof. Bent Sorensen, Ph.D. (University of Houston),
Prof. Vadym Volosovych, Ph.D. (Erasmus University Rotterdam)

Fields of Research