Home Country Effects of Foreign Direct Investment: A Case Study of Taiwan's Manufacturing Sector

隨著全球化的發展，對外投資不僅在國際經貿中所扮演的角色愈來愈重要，型態也愈來愈多元，呈現出與過去大不相同的特性與風貌。這樣的發展趨勢，再度引起學者對廠商對外投資的影響效果產生興趣。過去有關對外投資影響效果的文獻，主要是以探討對外投資對地主國經濟發展的影響為主，探討對母國或母公司影響的文獻則不多，特別是開發中國家的廠商對外投資對母國影響的研究更是付之闕如。為了彌補此方面文獻之不足，本研究利用台灣製造業1987-2003年的廠商資料來探討廠商對外投資對其技術升級之影響。 廠商對外投資對母國經濟影響的相關議題在台灣一直受到持續的關注，1991年政府開放廠商赴大陸投資之後，該議題更是引發熱切的討論。部分學者擔憂廠商對外投資後將造成國內產業的空洞化；但有另一部分的學者則主張，台灣只要持續技術升級及產業升級就可避免空洞化的危機。有鑑於此，本研究利用三個經濟指標，研發支出、生產力與效率，及技能提升(skill-upgrading)來檢驗不具競爭優勢的產業或附加價值鏈外移，是否有利於台灣進行技術升級。 本研究首先建立了一個理論模型來探討廠商對外投資對其國內研發活動的影響。研究結果顯示，廠商對外投資對其國內的研發支出可能同時產生兩個相反的影響效果，即互補效果及替代效果。互補效果主要來自於廠商對外投資後的「規模擴大效果」，而替代效果的發生則會因廠商對外投資動機之不同，而有不同的來源管道。 本研究實證模型的創新之處在於利用propensity score matching的配對方式搭配difference-in-differences的估計方法來控制實證研究中常會出現的自我選擇誤差(self-selection bias)及互為因果(causality)的問題。本研究採用了四種不同的配對方式來建構對外投資廠商的配對樣本，並發現Nearest available matching within calipers的配對方式可以產生最佳的配對效果，在不犧牲太多樣本數的情況下，顯著縮小對外投資廠商在對外投資前與無對外投資廠商的特性差距。 本研究的實證結果發現，僅管對外投資廠商，特別是赴開發中國家投資的廠商可能對母國的就業造成不利的衝擊，但卻能夠顯著提高母國的研發支出、技術效率及勞工技能，顯示廠商對外投資確實有助於台灣的技術升級。研究結果認為台灣政府應重新思考產業政策及社會福利政策的制定方向，以解決這些新的經濟議題。Foreign direct investment has played an increasingly important role in the world economy and, as a consequence, an immense amount of research has investigated its determinants and effects. However, while previous studies have focused on the impact of inward FDI on the host countries, there has been relatively little research on the impact of outward foreign direct investment (OFDI) on the home countries in general, and on developing economies (LDCs) in particular. To fill this gap in the literature, this thesis investigates the home-country effects of the OFDI activity of Taiwanese manufacturing firms. To be specific, the impact of OFDI on the investing firms’ domestic R&D spending, productivity and efficiency, employment and skill-upgrading is examined. A theoretical model is developed to examine the relationship between OFDI and domestic R&D activity. It is shown that OFDI could induce two opposing effects on domestic R&D spending, namely, a complementary effect and a substitution effect. The complementary effect arises mainly due to the “sales-increasing effect” of overseas investment. Substitution effects might arise from different channels depending on FDI motives. Firm-level panel data covering the period 1987-2003 are used in the empirical analysis. The novelty in this thesis is the application of a propensity score matching approach combined with the difference-in-differences method to control for the possible selection bias related to the empirical analysis. Four different matching methods are used to construct matched samples of Taiwan’s OFDI firms. The empirical results reveal that, although Taiwanese overseas investment, especially the investment in LDCs, reduces domestic employment, it stimulates investing firms’ domestic R&D spending, technology efficiency and skill intensity. This implies that while the OFDI activity of Taiwanese firms has brought about a positive effect on their technological upgrading, which is beneficial to the industrial development and resource allocation of the economy, the recent increase in the unemployment in Taiwan could to some extent be attributed to the OFDI activity. It also suggests that the Taiwanese government might need to reconsider its industrial policy as well as social welfare policy in order to deal with these new economic issues