"Technology Cycle and Japanese Foreign Direct Investment : Theory and Empirical Evidence"

“技术周期和日本外国直接投资：理论和经验证据”

• 批准号: 08630108
• 负责人: KIMURA Yui
• 金额: $ 1.09万
• 依托单位: The University of Tsukuba
• 依托单位国家: 日本
• 项目类别: Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research (C)
• 财政年份: 1996
• 资助国家: 日本
• 起止时间: 1996 至 1997
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://kaken.nii.ac.jp/grant/KAKENHI-PROJECT-08630108/
• 关键词: Foreign Direct Investment; Multinational Firms; Product Cycle Theory; Internationalization Strategy; Technological Evolution; Evolutionary Economics; 外国籍企業; 産業サイクル理論; 技術のvariety

This research is an attempt to further explore the relationships between technological innovation and the firms' foreign direct investment activities. It is known from the preceding research that technological innovation is the major driving force of FDI,but this research aims at developing new hypotheses concerning the relationships between technological cycle and the patterns of FDI and providing a piece of empirical evidence from the Japanese data.As we show in Chapter One of this report, we confirm that the key determinant of Japanese FDI is indeed technological innovation. We also find that while technological innovation is under way at home locations, firms tend to concentrate production close to the R&D location and try to service foreign markets through export rather than FDI.In Chapter Two, we examine statistically the determinants of Korean FDI in the present day. The present Korean FDI seems to resemble very closely that of Japan in the 1960s-1970s when Japanese firms were still weak in technological innovative capacity. The study finds that Korean FDI is indeed based on a very fragile technological base. The Korean firms are active in industries where they are losing comparative advantage in the home lacation, and they are aggressively undertaking FDI in order to maintain their advantage by moving production to foreign locations. This situation resembles that of Japanese FDI in the 1960s-1979s. These two studies imply that the Japanese expansion of FDI has been driven by the technological evolution, which allowed them to transform themselves from the technological follower to the technological leader. The industries that are major foreign investors have also shifted from those that have been dependent on Japan's comparative advantage to those that compete on high-tech based competitive advantage.

本研究试图进一步探讨技术创新与企业对外直接投资活动之间的关系。在以往的研究中，技术创新是对外直接投资的主要驱动力，但本研究的目的是对技术周期与对外直接投资模式之间的关系提出新的假设，并利用日本的数据进行实证。正如本报告第一章所述，我们确认了技术创新确实是日本对外直接投资的关键决定因素。我们还发现，虽然技术创新正在进行中的母国，企业倾向于集中生产靠近R&D的位置，并试图通过出口，而不是FDI服务于国外市场。目前韩国的外国直接投资似乎与日本在1960 - 1970年代的情况非常相似，当时日本企业的技术创新能力仍然很弱。研究发现，韩国的外国直接投资确实是建立在非常脆弱的技术基础之上的。韩国企业在本国正在失去比较优势的行业中十分活跃，它们积极进行外国直接投资，以便通过将生产转移到外国地点来保持其优势。这种情况类似于1960年代至1979年代日本的外国直接投资。这两项研究表明，日本的FDI扩张是由技术演进驱动的，这使得日本能够从技术跟随者转变为技术领先者。作为主要外国投资者的产业也从依赖日本的比较优势转向了依靠高技术竞争优势的产业。