Foreign ownership and skill-biased technological change

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: Koch, Michael; Smolka, Marcel
• 署名单位: University of Bayreuth; Aarhus University
• 刊物名称: JOURNAL OF INTERNATIONAL ECONOMICS
• ISSN/ISSBN: 0022-1996
• DOI: 10.1016/j.jinteco.2019.01.017
• 发表日期: 2019
• 页码: 84-104
• 关键词: Multinational enterprises; Mergers and Acquisitions; skill-biased technological change; Worker training; PRODUCTIVITY

摘要

We conduct an empirical investigation into the effects of foreign ownership on worker skills using firm-level data from Spain. To control for endogeneity bias due to selection into foreign ownership, we combine a difference-in-differences approach with a propensity score weighting estimator. Our results provide novel evidence that foreign-acquired firms actively raise the skills of their workforce in response to the acquisition by hiring high-skilled workers and providing worker training. To pin down the mechanism, we exploit unique information on whether firms use their foreign parent in exporting to foreign markets. Our results suggest a fundamental role for market access through the foreign parent in explaining skill upgrading in foreign-acquired firms. We reveal substantial productivity gains within foreign-acquired firms and we show that these gains derive from a concurrent effort to raise worker skills and adopt more advanced technology, suggesting a skill bias in technological innovations. We develop a simple theoretical model of foreign ownership featuring technology skill complementarities in production that can rationalize our findings. (C) 2019 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.