• Journal of Labour Economics
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• v.29 no.3
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• pp.1-23
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• 2006

This study investigates the effects of inward foreign direct investment on local workers' wages by focusing on U.S. manufacturing industries for the period from 1987 to 1992. Contrary to public perception that foreign ownership is positively associated with higher wages, previous studies show mixed results. Since most of the previous studies used industry or firm level average wages, they can not control for the impact of individual characteristics on wages. I use two different approaches to control individual characteristics and to implement estimation in this study: (1) One-step estimation with industry-state level of inward foreign direct investments by using individual level data, and (2) Two-step industry characteristic regression approach. The higher presence of foreign firms is associated with higher local wages after workers' observable characteristics are controlled for in the first approach. This effect, however, disappears once workers' industry affiliations and regions are controlled for in cross-section analysis. In a panel data analysis, I did not find any statistically significant positive association between inward FDI activities and industry wage premiums within industry. Further, inward FDI activities appeared to be negatively associated with worker's industry wage premium for workers with more than high school education.

• International Commerce and Information Review
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• v.12 no.3
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• pp.123-143
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• 2010

This paper attempts to analyze the strategies that Korean enterprise have taken to respond to China's rapidly changing foreign direct investment policies, especially after China's participation in the WTO. China's logistics industry has entered a stage of fast growth and the demand of logistics infrastructure Korea which is trying to be a logistics hub in Northeast Asia has to pay attention to the logistics of China. This paper provides the basic information for enhancing global logistics to logistics enterprise. Korean logistics enterprises analyze problem of China's policy and will have to cope political change spontaneously.

• Journal of the Korean Geographical Society
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• v.39 no.2
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• pp.241-255
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• 2004

The main aim of this article is to identify the fundamental reason for changes in the geography of Korean foreign direct investment (FDI) in China. More specifically, the article argues that changes in the industrial sectors and the location of FDI resulted from the transition of strategies for Korean FDI in China since the late 1990s is not based on ownership specific advantages, internalization advantages and locational advantages (OIL), but on changes in site where both the needs of Korea and China are articulated, i.e. the strategy for business integration, centering on market, institution and technology. In other words, changes in the location of Korean FDI in China have been the result of changes in the Chinese market structure, institutional changes in Chinese inward FDI incentives and regulations and the accumulation of Korean technology capability since 2000. In addition, by investigating production networks in China, this article attempts to identify the relationships between changes in Korean FDI location and changes in market, institution and technology. Therefore, the empirical evidence provided by the case study of CDMA (code division multiple access) mobile communications FDI since 2000 in China is used to identify the impact of market, institution and technology on the location of Korean FDI in China.

• International Area Studies Review
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• v.18 no.3
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• pp.23-46
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• 2014

Applying the dynamic shift-share analysis, this paper decomposes inflow of foreign direct investment (FDI) of Korea for the period of 2003-2012 into three components: world growth effect, industry-mix effect and competitive effect. Taking the group of developed countries as population for comparison, this paper finds that Korea has been lagging behind the group of developed countries in attracting FDIs, thereby having recorded negative aggregate industry-mix effects and negative aggregate competitive effects as well. However, the following industries have recorded positive competitive effects: textiles, chemicals, electrical and electronic equipment, motor vehicles and other transport equipment, hotels and restaurants and business services. Moreover, in the sub-period of 2008-2012, positive competitive effects have been recorded for most manufacturing industries. This reflects the fact that inward FDI into Korea has not been affected much by the financial crisis of 2009.

• East Asian Economic Review
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• v.19 no.1
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• pp.71-97
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• 2015

This study examines the effects of several factors indicating economic openness-imported intermediate goods, total imports, IFDI (inward foreign direct investment), and foreign ownership-on regular, irregular jobs and the ratio of irregular employment to regular employment. Findings revealed that imported intermediate inputs and IFDI affected neither regular nor irregular job figures. However, an increase in total imports led to a decrease in the number of irregular jobs without affecting regular full time jobs, leading to a decrease in the ratio of irregular jobs to regular jobs. On the other hand, changes in foreign ownership structure had a contrary effect, that is, a decrease in the number of regular jobs and an increase in irregular ones, and, thus, an increase in the ratio of irregular jobs to regular jobs. Overall results showed that a rise in imports results in depressed overall employment, irregular employment in particular, while more IFDI results in more irregular jobs replacing regular ones, effectively exacerbating job insecurity. The implication of this analysis is that greater economic openness may have a negative impact on the South Korean labor market overall.

• Korea Trade Review
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• v.41 no.4
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• pp.245-267
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• 2016

The purpose of this study is to investigate the current situation of foreign direct investment of Korea based on GVC (Global Value Chain) perspective and to presentthe policy direction. From GVC perspective which comprehensively describes the world's increasing FDI and imports/exports phenomenon since the 2000s, the level of internationalization of Korea is excessively concentrated in trade. Therefore, the expansion of foreign investment (OFDI, IFDI) is urgently needed. The results of regression analysis using data from 50 countries and the international comparison of major countries including Germany, Switzerland, Singapore, etc, showed that the level of foreign direct investment of Korea is 20 to 30 years behind compared to those major countries. Therefore, exploiting the benefits of trade and foreign direct investment at the same time is needed to increase the level of GDP per capita.

• Journal of the Economic Geographical Society of Korea
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• v.12 no.4
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• pp.438-453
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• 2009

Attracting advanced foreign enterprises into the less-developed regions has gained increasing importance as a regional development strategy in Korea. This study critically examines the foreign-direct investment-led regional development strategy of Wales, United Kingdom. Despite a high FDI inflow in manufacturing, the Welsh regional economy has suffered from specialization in low-skilled assembly with limited R&D activities, insufficient linkage with local domestic suppliers, and violent fluctuation in local employment in response to changes within the global business environment. This tendency shows that the foreign-invested companies have neither locally embedded themselves enough nor created the external agglomeration economies in the region. At the same time, the Welsh local government's excessive dependence on financial incentives packages to induce multinationals, rather than effort to create regional innovative capacity, has resulted in a sizable fiscal loss, an abused local planning process, and subordination of the local government's major administrative decision-making on foreign investors. The Welsh FDI case suggests that an effective FDI attraction policy should include inter-regional cooperation and coordination in the inward investment attraction procedure, a comprehensive land use planning process, and state-level concrete governance on FDI.

• Korea Trade Review
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• v.43 no.2
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• pp.87-105
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• 2018

We investigate the effects of inward foreign direct investment on innovation in Korean industries from 1998 to 2015 by first dividing FDI into greenfield and M&A (mergers and acquisitions). Furthermore, we use the number of patent applications as the proxy of innovation. Our empirical results are as follows: First, inward foreign direct investment has a significantly positive effect on the number of patent applications. This result suggests that the transfer of technology or knowledge through the inward foreign direct investment has a positive impact on innovation in Korean industries. Second, the greenfield investment has a positive impact on patent applications. This result is consistent with Liu and Zou (2008)'s assertion that greenfield investment has a positive impact on innovation by increasing facilities or plants. The M&A investment, however, has no significant effect on patent applications. This result is consistent with Stiebale and Reize (2011) who argue that the host countries do not benefit from technology transfer through M&A investments. In addition, this supports Liu and Zou (2008) and Garcia et al. (2013)'s hypothesis that foreign parent firms do not influence the innovation of host countries by employing strategies to increase market power rather than R&D activities through M&A investments. It is meaningful that this study first analyzes the impact of foreign direct investment on innovation in Korean industries and uses the number of patent applications as a proxy of innovation. Our empirical evidence provides policy implications for innovation and attraction of inward foreign direct investments.

• International Commerce and Information Review
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• v.7 no.4
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• pp.435-453
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• 2005

This paper suggests several strategies for promoting Trade and Foreign Direct Investment cooperation to the Korean government and companies as follows ; For Korean government, its trade policy would be given much weight on the import from the Vietnam in the early developing stage. This import could be compensated and increased with the counter export of Korean products like the industrial goods. For Korean companies, they would make haste to invest and develop the abundant energy and natural resources in Vietnam. Their desirable strategies would be moving small scale projects into large ones, production partnerships with the foreign developed and experienced companies, and international joint ventures for using inward FDI incentives. The long range vision and perseverance are indispensable for promoting trade and foreign direct investments between and Korea and Vietnam and both parties' win-win results and development in the end.

• International Area Studies Review
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• v.15 no.3
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• pp.29-53
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• 2011

This paper studies the contribution of imports and inward foreign direct investment (FDI) as a vehicle of technology transfer onto the EU new member states at both macroeconomic and industry level. The paper takes the effectiveness of the recipient's utilization into account by constructing a new index, the so-called Effective Absorption (EA) Index, to measure ability to absorb and utilize the foreign technology in the recipient country. Using data from 12 donors and 10 recipients from 1998 to 2009, the study at macroeconomic level indicates that technical spillovers of foreign research and development (R&D) play more crucial role relatively to domestic R&D on total factor productivity (TFP) growth of the new member states. Imports are found as the major vehicle of technical spillovers rather than inward FDI. The study at industry level is conducted by using data from 17 manufacturing industries of 10 donors and 6 recipients during 1998 to 2009. The empirical results also support the findings at country level. The patterns of technology transfer are different across industries. Nonetheless, technical spillovers exhibit significantly high contribution on TFP growth in high-tech manufacturing industries.