The Role of Strategic Interactions in Innovation and Foreign Direct Investment for Small and Medium Enterprises

发达国家和发展中国家政府概述了中小企业的重要性和跨国公司的吸引力，认为这是实现持续工业生产率增长的关键。然而，目前就我所知，中小企业的增长促进作用并没有理论基础，跨国公司提高产业生产率增长的机制也没有得到很好的理解。在我的博士论文中，我将研究促进中小企业如何提高一个行业的生产率增长，以及这些效应如何与外国直接投资（FDI）流动相互作用，从而影响创新和福利。促进中小企业可能对创新和福利产生重大影响，并可能影响外国直接投资流动，也可能受到外国直接投资流动的影响。然而，促进中小企业或外国直接投资的政策需要理论基础和实证分析。该项目的目标有三个方面。1)建立一个具有竞争和企业生产率分布的理论模型，以研究当我们改变一个行业中中小型企业的分布时，创新决策是如何改变的。2)将FDI引入理论框架，探讨FDI对生产率、创新和福利的影响。3)使用包含东亚国家企业的大型数据集测试理论预测。在研究方法方面，该项目涉及实证和理论两部分，并跨越了贸易文献和经济学创新文献（基于产业经济理论）。因此，该项目需要高级数学技能（主要是优化和比较静态分析）和微观计量经济学。

Governments in developed and developing countries outline the importance of SMEs and the attraction of multinational firms as a key to generating sustained industrial productivity growth. However, currently, to the best of my knowledge, there is not a theoretical foundation for the growth-enhancing effect of SMEs and the mechanism through which multinational firms increase an industry's productivity growth is not well understood. In my Ph.D. thesis, I will investigate how promoting SMEs can enhance an industry's productivity growth and how these effects interact with flows of foreign direct investment (FDI) in such a way that they both affect innovation and welfare. Promoting SMEs could lead to a significant impact on innovation and welfare and it could affect and be affected by FDI flows. However, policies promoting SME or FDI require a theoretical foundation and empirical analysis.The aims of the project are threefold. 1) Develop a theoretical model with competition and a productivity distribution of firms to examine how innovation decisions are altered when we change the distribution of small and medium firms in an industry. 2)Introduce FDI into the theoretical framework to explore the impact of FDI on productivity, innovation and welfare. 3)Test the theoretical predictions using a large data set containing firms in East Asian countries.When it comes to research methods, the project involves both empirical and theoretical components and also crosses the trade literature and the literature on innovation in economics (based in industrial economic theory). Hence the project requires advanced skills in mathematics (mostly optimisation and comparative static analysis) and microeconometrics.