Study On China's OFDI Reverse Technology Spillover Effect And Its Regional Differences

With global competition becoming more and more fierce,the usage of outward foreign direct investment(OFDI)to obtain reverse technology spillovers has become an important channel for a country to improve its technological level and enhancing its competitive advantage,which has also become a research hotspot in academy in recent years.With the continuous expansion of China's OFDI,scholars have begun to make tentative studies on China's OFDI reverse technology spillover effect.However,these studies have paid little attention to the effect differences in different regions,and they have mostly neglected the effect of absorptive capacity on spillover effect.Based on the perspective of regional absorptive capacity,this paper conducts theoretical and empirical researches on China's OFDI reverse technology spillover effect and its regional differences.Firstly this paper theoretically elaborates the implementation mechanism of the OFDI reverse technology spillover effect and the adjustment mechanism of regional absorption capacity to this effect:The OFDI reverse technology spillover effect works on three levels:the enterprise level(mechanisms including acquisition and transformation of technological resources,technological re-innovation,R&D cost allocation and income feedback),the industry level(competition and demonstration effects),and the country level(industry linkages and industrial diffusion effects),among which the enterprise level may also have a technical "extrusion" effect due to the foreign investment crowding out R&D costs.Regional absorption capacity can be deconstructed into three major capability dimensions:technology acquisition,technology conversion,and technology re-innovation.These three dimensions respectively affect the three stages of reverse technology spillover.The specific elements of regional absorptive capacity are acting on the above three dimensions,thus affecting the extent of the OFDI reverse technology spillover effect.After above,this paper uses the provincial panel data of China from 2003 to 2015,using total factor productivity(TFP),pure technological progress(TC)and technical efficiency(EC)as the dependent variables,empirically testing the Chinese OFDI reverse technology spillover effect and its regional differences.The empirical results indicate that the OFDI reverse technology spillover effect has not yet appeared in the whole country,but after adding regional dummy variables,we found that the effect in the eastern region is positive,and the effect in the central and western regions is not significant or even has a negative effect.Considering the regional differences,this paper furtherly applies the threshold regression model to examine the impact of regional absorption capacity factors on the effect.The results show that only when the regional human capital,R&D intensity,level of openness,economic development,financial development level,and technology gap reach a certain threshold,positive and significant reverse technology spillovers will appear.Finally,the paper summarizes the main conclusions and proposes a series of targeted recommendations from the national and corporate level.