The Korean Journal of Economic Studies
Productivity Difference and Globalization Strategies of Firms
Hyunbae Chun(Sogang University), Janghee Cho(Sogang University), Jung Hur(Sogang University)Year 2013Vol. 61No. 1
Abstract
This paper conducts empirical analysis on productivity difference amonggroups of firms that perform different globalization strategies such as exportsand foreign direct investments. Using data on the Survey of Business Structureand Activities provided by the Statistics Korea, we set up three groups of firms(domestic firms, exporting firms, and foreign direct investment firms) and useKolmogorov-Smirnov tests to examine if there is any productivity differentialamong those groups. Our results show that the level of productivity ofexporting firms is higher than that of domestic firms; and the productivity offoreign direct investment firms is even higher than that of the exporters. Theresults of the productivity ordering are robust to various considerations such ascapital intensity, R&D intensity, presence of parent firms, and continuation ofthe same globalization strategy. The contribution of the paper to the literatureis the first empirical study showing that the globalization strategy of Koreanfirms is determined by firm-specific factors using firm-level dataset.