The presence of MNCs and the differentials and spillovers of productivity and wages in Southeast Asian manufacturing

This literature survey paper overall investigates the presence of multinational corporations (MNCs) and its associations with productivity and wages in Southeast Asian manufacturing during the last few decades prior to 2010. Despite the fact that MNC-share tendency and levels are mixed across countries, the levels demonstrate the MNC characters of high labor productivity and high export propensities. Besides, the empirical results of differentials and spillovers somewhat give similar implications between productivity and wages. The evidence is rather positive for all manufacturing combined, softened after accounting for firm and industry character indicators, and varied at the industry level. Nevertheless, the spillover study of Vietnamese manufacturing in particular relatively has problems with fixed-effects panel estimates.