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Does Foreign Direct Investment Lead To Industrial Agglomeration?, Wen-Tai Hsu, Yi Lu, Xuan Luo, Lianming Zhu

Research Collection School Of Economics

This paper studies the effect of foreign direct investment (FDI) on industrial agglomeration. Using the differential effects of FDI deregulation in 2002 in China on different industries, we find that FDI actually affects industrial agglomeration negatively. This result is somewhat counter-intuitive, as the conventional wisdom tends to suggest that FDI attracts domestic firms to cluster for various agglomeration benefits, in particular technology spillovers. To reconcile our empirical findings and the conventional wisdom, we develop a theory of FDI and agglomeration based on two counter-veiling forces. Technology diffusion from FDI attracts domestic firms to cluster, but fiercer competition drives firms away. …