FDI Externalities and the Response of the Korean Stock Market

Abstract

This paper addresses foreign direct investment (FDI) externalities using capital market data of Korean stock exchange and examines the effects of FDI in both manufacturing and service sectors. The empirical findings in this paper are generally consistent with previous findings based on the traditional productivity measure from Cobb-Douglas production function: 1) the market value of listed stocks in the manufacturing sector responds to the Horizontal (intra-industry) effects in a positive way, and 2) the market value of listed stocks in the manufacturing sector benefits from foreign invested downstream manufacturing firms, which is often called backward linkages (i.e. supplying manufacturing goods to foreign invested firms generates positive externalities to domestic manufacturing suppliers. The new finding of this paper is that the market value of listed stocks in the manufacturing sector benefits from foreign invested service firms through forward linkages (i.e service from foreign invested firms generates positive externalities to domestic manufacturing firms).