The Influencing Factors And Performance Of Chinese Firms’ Outward Foreign Direct Investment Along The "Belt And Road"

In the context of declining global economic growth,slowing trade growth,and antiglobalization,outward foreign direct investment(OFDI)under the Belt and Road Initiative(BRI)from China is steadily rising.However,as the implementation carrier of the Belt and Road construction,firms’ OFDI is still deficiency.For example,firms’ OFDI is concentrated in the tax haven,which are often questioned by legitimacy in the international market and lack of international competitiveness.Thus,it is necessary to explore the characteristics,motivations,and determinants of Chinese firms’ OFDI under BRI,which helps optimize the layout of firms’ OFDI.In the literature,extant research regarded BRI as a new investment situation or an integrated policy,and emphasized that advantages from host country and firm-specific resource are the key drivers behind firms’ expansion to foreign markets.Based on the special situational characteristics of the Belt and Road Initiative,this pa per studies the influencing factors and performance of Chinese firms’ OFDI under the BRI from the perspective of the home government and regional environment.This paper about this topic includes three parts.First,from the perspective of the home country government,this paper constructs the BRI institutional enactment across regions in terms of infrastructure and trade,and defines the government involvement from personal political connections and ownership political connections.Meanwhile,we discuss the heterogeneous influence mechanism of the BRI institutional enactment and government involvement on firms’ OFDI along the belt and road.Second,from the perspective of formal and informal institution,government and market,this paper also explores the moderating effect of firms’ OFDI under the belt and road,including the interaction effect of institution enactment and government involvement,regional business institutional environment and aforementioned variables.Finally,this paper proposes the impact of firms’ OFDI along the belt and road on their performance,and further studies the impact of firms’ portfolio characteristics of OFDI on their performance.Based on a dataset of Chinese publicly-listed manufacturing firms from 2014 to2019,the paper investigates the influence of institutional enactment and government involvement on firms’ OFDI under the Belt and Road.The results suggest that(1)the regional institutional enactment along the belt and road(including infrastructure connectivity and trade connectivity)can promote firms to carry out OFDI activities along the belt and road;(2)personal government-business connections significantly promote Chinese firms’ OFDI,while ownership government-business connections inhibit it;(3)institutional enactment may weaken the positive effect of personal government-business connections on firms’ OFDI,while they also weaken the negative effect of ownership government-business connections on firms’ OFDI;(4)regional business environment negatively moderates the impact of institutional enactment and government involvement on OFDI along the belt and road;(5)there is a positive influence between the level of OFDI along the belt and road and firms’ performance;(6)portfolio characteristics of OFDI,the quality and difference of the host countries’ business environment,also have a significant promoting effect on firms’ performance.From the home country perspective,this paper enriches the research about the influencing factors of Chinese firms’ OFDI along the belt and road.Attention is focused on the small-scale characteristics of the Belt and Road Initiative from the perspective of regional heterogeneity and institutional diversity,which provides a basis for understanding the influence and mechanism of policy implementation.In addition,from the perspective of formal and informal institutions,the paper constructs the analysis framework of influencing factors,clarifying the influencing mechanism of institutional enactment and government involvement.