A Study On China's Technology Spillover Effect Of Outward Foreign Direct Investment

The practice of developing countries in the past few decades shows that the immitation and learning of advanced foreign technologies,besides independent R&D,has become one of the main approaches to achieve economic catch-up.The achievements made since the implementation of China's "going out" strategy have made people aware of the key role of outward foreign direct investment(OFDI)in obtaining technology spillovers.However,empirical studies have not solved a practical problem,namely,why there are differences of the growth path in different countries and regions when they have performed the similar OFDI strategy.This dissertation discusses the relationship between OFDI,technology spillovers and economic growth from the perspective of absorptive capacity in home country,and points out that the intrinsic influence mechanism of absorptive capacity on reverse technology spillovers of OFDI.Firstly,based on the game model of OFDI and the micro-mechanism analysis of reverse technology spillovers from investment in developed countries and developing countries,this dissertation assumes that there are reverse technology spillovers from China's OFDI.The result of examination shows that the enterprise invests overseas has relative productivity advantage,whereas it has nagative technology spillover effect on other local companies.Next,we have expanded the CH model to integrate the impact of OFDI,import trade,FDI and direct technology spillovers on economic growth into the same research framework for comparative analysis.It was found that OFDI has spillovers to domestic technological progress.The impact,however,is small and insignificant.The result of the sub-regional studies shows that OFDI has produced significant positive spillovers in coastal areas,while the reverse technology spillover effect of OFDI in inland areas is not significant.In view of the fact that positive spillovers occur in coastal regions where the economy is relatively developed,this dissertation further analyzes the above empirical results from the perspective of the absorptive capacity in the home country.We first define the theoretical connotation of absorptive capacity,and explain the important role of the introduction of absorptive capacity in explaining the national and regional disparities of OFDI spillover effect.Then,the absorptive capacity is divided into seven aspects:R&D intensity,economic development,infrastructure level,financial development,the degree of opening up,population aging,and institutional factor.We use the panel threshold regression model to analyze the influence of these absorptive capacity factors on reverse technology spillovers of OFDI.The results show that,with the exception of financial development and population aging,the effect of technology spillovers can be maximized if the absorptive capacity factors are within the threshold intervals.That is,the technology spillover effect of OFDI shows a dual-threshold characteristic and has a nonlinear influence on promoting economic growth.In order to examine more deeply the intrinsic mechanism of absorptive capacity affecting technology spillovers and economic growth,this dissertation introduces the reverse technology spillovers of OFDI into the endogenous growth model that has been extended towards an open economic version.By comparative static analysis,we find the impact of absorptive capacity over technology spillovers and hence steady state growth rate.The basic conclusion of this model is that there is a threshold effect for the reverse technology spillovers of OFDI.It reveals that absorptive capacity influences the threshold from promotion to suppression of technology spillovers on economic growth,which in turn causes a significant national and regional difference in reverse technology spillover effect of OFDI.We then use panel data from China's 31 provinces and cities in 2003-2016 to estimate the threshold effect of reverse technology spillovers of OFDI in coastal and inland areas,and calculate the turning points of spillovers in sample provinces.It is proved that due to the regional disparity of absorptive capacity,the impact of reverse technology spillovers in coastal and inland areas of China on economic growth varies.The empirical results also show that the spillover effect based on investment in developed countries is significantly greater than that of developing countries,and former's turning points of technology spillovers in both coastal and inland areas are higher than the latter.Finally,this dissertation puts forward to some policy recommendations,including the subregional OFDI policies,the complementary relationship between independent R&D and technology spillovers,and the phased policy of the opening up.