I examine whether foreign direct investment increases the productivity of manufacturing firms. I test the proposition that local firms benefit from supplying multinational firms (spillovers through backward linkages) and by purchasing inputs from multinationals (spillovers through forward...

I examine whether foreign direct investment increases the productivity of manufacturing firms. I test the proposition that local firms benefit from supplying multinational firms (spillovers through backward linkages) and by purchasing inputs from multinationals (spillovers through forward...

Using panel data from Chinese Industrial Surveys of Medium-sized and Large Firms for 2000-06, we show that while there is evidence of positive technological spillovers from FDI, such spillovers are very unevenly distributed. For some industries, there are positive spillovers from FDI presence in...