Does Foreign Direct Investment Stimulate New Firm Creation? In Search of Spillovers through Industrial and Geographical Linkages

Main author: Sun, Laixiang
Other authors: Lee, In Hyeock
Hong, Eunsuk
Format: Journal Article           
Online access: Click here to view record


Summary: This paper examines the spillover effects of inward foreign direct investment (FDI) on the entrepreneurial activities of new firm creation through both industrial and geographical linkages. Using a dataset of 44,434 newly created small firms in 234 regions of South Korea in 2000–2004, this study finds that while the spillover impacts of FDI in the low-tech industry are positive and significant across almost all four possible combinations of the intra-/inter-regional and intra-/inter-sectoral channels, the impacts in the high-tech industry are largely intra-sectoral within the host region and across neighboring regions. Moreover, all statistically significant spillover effects follow an inverted ‘U’-shaped curvilinear trend.