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  • P-ISSN 1738-656X
  • E-ISSN 2586-4130
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KDI Journal of Economic Policy. Vol. 37, No. supplementary, March 2015, pp. 87-121

https://doi.org/10.23895/kdijep.2015.37.5.87

× KDI Open Access is a program of fully open access journals to facilitate the widest possible dissemination of high-quality research. All research articles published in KDI JEP are immediately, permanently and freely available online for everyone to read, download and share in terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

Performance Analysis on Foreign-invested Firms in the SEZ

Yong-Seok Choi; Yeongkwan Song

Author & Article History

Manuscript received 30 August 2014; revision received 11 September 2014; accepted 07 February 2015.

Abstract

To attract more FDI inflows, the Korean government has designated several special economic zones (SEZs), offering various advantages and support to the FDI. There is, however, a shared acknowledgement that those efforts have gained little reward. In this regard, this paper empirically analyzes company-level performances of labor productivity, operating profit ratio, propensity to invest and innovate, etc. and then conducts regression analysis and PSM analysis to see whether these performances are meaningfully different between foreign-invested firm and domestic firm and between foreign-invested firms. The main findings of this paper are as follows. First, in the aspects of labor productivity and operating profit ratio, no empirical evidence was found to support the hypothesis that foreigninvested firm outperforms domestic firm in efficiency and profitability, Second, in the aspects of propensity to invest, foreign-invested firms in foreign investment zones outperformed domestic firms. Third, in the aspect of R&D investment, overall, foreign-invested firms showed a stronger propensity to invest than domestic firms, but there is no empirical evidence that high propensity to invest was driven by the policy on special economic zones. In the aspect of investment in educational training, empirical evidences were found that the role of foreign-invested firms outside the special zones turned out to be the strongest and that among firms inside special zones, it was those in the free economic zone that outperformed domestic firms. Lastly, foreign-invested firms showed a stronger propensity to employ than domestic firms, but there is no empirical evidence that high propensity to employ was driven by the policy on special economic zones.

Keywords

외국인투자, 경제특구, 2007년 금융위기, FDI, SEZ, Financial Crisis of 2007

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