| dc.description.abstract | In the emerging country context, FDI has been acknowledged as a key external knowledge source to improve local firm performance. Recently, returnees, as another critical external knowledge source, have received increasing attention. Returnees are those who have studied and/or worked abroad and then returned to their homeland. They can bring multi-cultural knowledge and superior skills after several years’ experience abroad. However, limited literature has examined how the interplay between FDI and returnees influences local firm performance. Most studies, if any, only focus on the role of individual returnees in FDI knowledge externalities. In this Ph.D. thesis, I integrate these two streams of literature and hope to investigate both aggregated and contingent roles of returnees in FDI knowledge diffusion. Based on a unique panel dataset from the annual census filed by Chinese high-tech manufacturing and services firms in Zhongguancun Science Park (ZSP), which is equivalent to the “Silicon Valley”, in Beijing from 2007 to 2013, I adopt the system-GMM model with Heckman corrections to test my hypotheses. My results suggest that FDI spillovers can improve local firms’ productivity in ZSP. However, this effect is contingent on the returnees’ repatriation process into local industries and on the returnees’ local clustering structures. More specifically, I first confirm that a fast pace of returnees’ repatriation facilitates FDI knowledge spillovers, while an irregular pace of repatriation hinders it. Second, a concentrated clustering of returnees promotes the FDI externalities, whereas a competitive structure attenuates it. Third, returnees clustered in related industries strengthen FDI spillovers, however, unrelated industrial clustering weakens it. Overall, this Ph.D. thesis not only calls for greater and more stable preferential policies to attract FDI and returnees to the local market but also suggests that policy-makers need to introduce returnees in a faster and rhythmic mode. And it is necessary to place more emphasis on managing the clustering structures of returnees to facilitate FDI knowledge spillovers. | en_US |
