Export, foreign direct investment, and local content requirement

Larry D. QIU*, Zhigang TAO

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Journal PublicationsJournal Article (refereed)peer-review

43 Citations (Scopus)

Abstract

Local content requirement (LCR) is a popular government policy in developing countries to regulate foreign direct investment. We establish a model with heterogeneous multinational firms and show that (a) the LCR policy affects the firms' modes of entry to a new market, with FDI being more likely to be adopted when there are lower LCRs, and (b) when facing the same LCR, a less efficient firm is more likely than a more efficient firm to adopt the FDI mode. Furthermore, we investigate the design of an optimal LCR policy. Two types of FDI benefits are considered, and two types of LCR policy are compared.
Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)101-125
Number of pages25
JournalJournal of Development of Economics
Volume66
Issue number1
Early online date2 Aug 2001
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - Oct 2001
Externally publishedYes

Funding

Financial support by a grant from the Research Grant Council of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region, China (HKUST6214/00H).

Keywords

  • FDI
  • Local content requirement
  • Uniform LCR
  • Discriminatory LCR
  • Multinationals
  • Export

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