Two essays in international trade and foreign direct investment

Abstract

This dissertation consists of two studies. The first study is about the effect of institutions on the realization of foreign direct investment (FDI), and the second study examines the role of Hong Kong as the export intermediaries for China’s export.

In the first study, we empirically examine the determinants for the breach of ex ante contracted FDI using a unique firm-level data set of foreign invested enterprises in China. We find that both the institutional quality of China’s various regions as well as that of FDI sourcing countries have significant impacts on the fulfillment rate of ex ante contracted FDI.

In the second study, we use China’s Custom data to analyze the factors affecting the share of China’s indirect exports routing through Hong Kong, and explore the reasons that account for the declining role of Hong Kong in China’s export. We find evidence that Hong Kong plays a greater role when regions are geographically closer to Hong Kong yet poorer in institutional quality, or when destination countries are further away and have more complicated importing documents. It has an advantage in helping China export differentiated products rather than homogenous goods, whereas has no advantage in helping export China’s new products. We find that the reallocation of China’s export across regions, products and firm types contributes to the decrease of Hong Kong’s role as China’s export intermediary. We also find that firms with higher productivity or higher increase in productivity would be more likely to export directly rather than export through Hong Kong.