• East Asian Economic Review
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• v.17 no.4
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• pp.417-444
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• 2013

This paper aims to empirically identify the effects of FTAs on outward and inward FDIs in Korea. Considering the income differences between Korea and its FTA partners, we hypothesize that FTAs have a positive effect on outward FDI to developing countries and inward FDI from developed countries. An underlying source of the hypothesis is the Knowledge-Capital model, addressing the positive (negative) relationship between trade costs and horizontal (vertical) FDI. We test for the hypothesis using data on Korea's FTAs and FDI over the period 2000-2010. We find that our empirical results support the hypothesis, and additionally, FTAs in general encourage FDI by creating an FDI-friendly environment.

• 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.

• 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.

• 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.

• International Commerce and Information Review
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• v.17 no.1
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• pp.137-163
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• 2015

This paper investigated the difference in the employment effectiveness of foreign invested companies in Korea by investor ratio and CEO nationality. To analyze the relationship between employment growth and investment ratio, CEO nationalty, firm age, company size, analysis of variance and regression are employed. Investment ratio is classified into three groups: 1. 0%${\leq}100%$. CEO nationality is classified into three groups: '1' if the CEO nationality is Korean, '2' Korean and Foreign, '3' Foreign. Employment growth turned out to be lower in groups of investment ratio equal to or bigger than 50% than in group which has investment ratio smaller than 50%. and the employment effect was not different depending on the type of CEO. By analyzing the employment growth with respect to investment ratio type and CEO nationality theoretically and empirically, the effect of inward foreign direct investment on employment and its preparation plan can be considered. The policy implication is that investment ratio should be considered in the future employment policy.

• 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.

• International Area Studies Review
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• v.13 no.3
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• pp.145-161
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• 2009

Applying the shift-share analysis, this paper decomposes FDI inflow into Korea for the period of 2003-2006. The paper finds that Korea has been lagging behind the world average in absorbing inward FDI, thereby recording negative aggregate industry-mix effects and negative aggregate competitive effects as well. However, the following industries have recorded positive competitive effect: electrical and electronic equipment, motor vehicles and other transport equipment, hotels and restaurants, transport, storage and communications, finance, and business services. In a nutshell, Korea is revealed to have competitive advantage in absorbing inward FDI in a few manufacturing industries and most of service industries. Government policies should accordingly be focused on these industries to encourage more inward FDIs.

• Korea Trade Review
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• v.44 no.6
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• pp.217-230
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• 2019

This study investigates the impacts of international trade and foreign direct investment (FDI) on income distribution both nationally as well as provincially in Vietnam. This study uses panel data of 63 provinces in Vietnam for the period of 2008-2016 and a time series dataset from 1992 to 2016. We found the following results. First, the income distribution is significantly affected by per capita income. When we consider the Kuznets hypothesis, the intra-provincial income inequality of Vietnam's 63 provinces follows a regular U-shaped relationship. In contrast, the income distribution in Vietnam exhibits an inverted U-shaped relationship between the Gini coefficient and per capita income. Second, the inward FDI tends to reduce income gaps in each province through the employment of predominantly low-skilled workers. FDI, however, seems to increase income inequality throughout Vietnam. This result is potentially due to the strong concentration of FDI into a very few areas. Third, the effect of trade openness exhibits a decrease in inequality both within each province and in the whole country of Vietnam.

• 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.