Trade, Foreign Direct Investment, and International Technology Transfer : A Survey
What role does trade play in international technology transfer? Do technologies introduced by multinational firms diffuse to local firms? What kinds of policies have proved successful in encouraging technology absorption from abroad and why? Using...
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| Format: | Journal Article |
| Language: | English en_US |
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World Bank
2013
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| Online Access: | http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/2002/09/17591850/trade-foreign-direct-investment-international-technology-transfer-survey http://hdl.handle.net/10986/16417 |
| Summary: | What role does trade play in
international technology transfer? Do technologies
introduced by multinational firms diffuse to local firms?
What kinds of policies have proved successful in encouraging
technology absorption from abroad and why? Using these
questions as motivation, this article surveys the recent
trade literature on international technology transfer,
paying particular attention to the role of foreign direct
investment. The literature argues that trade necessarily
encourages growth only if knowledge spillovers are
international in scope. Empirical evidence on the scope of
knowledge spillovers (national versus international) is
ambiguous. Several recent empirical plant-level studies have
questioned earlier studies that argued that foreign direct
investment has a positive impact on the productivity of
local firms. Yet at the aggregate level, evidence supports
the view that foreign direct investment has a positive
effect on economic growth in the host country. |
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