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This article presents data and analyzes the structure of employment in 13 African economies at the administrative unit level, with a focus on the role of services. We provide two novel pieces of evidence. First, we present a descriptive snapshot of changes in the composition of employment over time and across geographies. This reveals evidence of structural transformation toward services and service-related occupations at subnational level and provides a fine-grained overview of who works in services and where and how this has changed over time. Second, we provide correlations between services and economic development, using per capita nightlight luminosity as a proxy. We document (1) a strong positive association between high skills services and economic development; (2) substantial heterogeneity across industries within services; and (3) a mediating role of market conditions and technology in the relation between services and economic development. Overall, our work highlights an important role of services activities for employment, skills, and economic development in Africa.

This paper examines the relationship between mobile internet, employment and structural transformation in Rwanda. Thanks to its ability to enable access to a wide range of ICT technologies, internet coverage has the potential to affect the dynamics and the composition of employment significantly. To demonstrate this, we have combined GSMA network coverage maps with individual-level information from national population censuses and labour force surveys, creating a district-level dataset of Rwanda that covers the period 2002 to 2019. Our results show that an increase in mobile internet coverage affects the labour market in two ways. First, by increasing employment opportunities. Second, by contributing to changes in the composition of the labour market. Education, migration and shifts in demand are all instrumental in explaining our findings.

This paper uses firm-level data from company tax declarations to analyse the complementary relationship between direct access to imported intermediate inputs and manufacturing firm productivity in South Africa. We provide support for the hypothesis of firm learning by importing. Our results show that importing is associated with higher productivity among South African manufacturing firms. In addition, importing a wider variety of intermediate inputs is associated with higher firm productivity, which is consistent with the idea that imported input varieties complement domestic varieties in production. We do not find strong evidence that imports from advanced economies are more relevant for productivity than are imports from emerging economies-which is contrary to expectations that the superior technology that is embedded in advanced economy imports would boost firm productivity.

This manual has been written to respond to the need of making available an exhaustive compilation in the Italian language of the main topics and problems of the political economy of development in poor countries. So far, a discussion of such topics in Italian has not been available. The drafting of this manual has benefitted from the teaching and research experience of several academics of the faculty of economics of the university of Florence. Part 1 focuses on key methodological approaches derived from the theory of collective choices. In turn, Part 2 discusses the orthodox and heterodox macroeconomic reforms applied in developing countries, and their problems. Part 3 illustrates the domestic policies that have been or should have been adopted in the field of food security, land reform, environmental sustainability, taxation, social spending, labor markets and population. Part 4 discusses then the domestic policy reforms in the field of international trade, foreign direct investments, capital flows and international migration. Last, Part 5 illustrates the historical experience of five policy regimes (i.e. the import substituting industrialization, redistributive approaches, the Asian Miracle, Washington Consensus, and Sustainable Development) that have been introduced in the non-socialist developing countries between the decolonization of the 1950s and the present time. The methodological approach followed in the manual starts from an evaluation of the real-life impact on growth, income distribution, the wellbeing of the population, and the environment of the policies adopted during each policy regime and in the main economic areas. Whenever the policy measures introduced in the past generated unsatisfactory results, the manual suggests possible alternatives inspired by the structuralist and Keynesian schools.

Media outlets globally have been reporting about civil protests against Chinese investments in Africa. We provide new evidence on this controversial topic and investigate the influence of Chinese official projects on political participation in 54 African countries between 20 0 0 and 2014. Using 50 x 50 km cells as the unit of analysis, we match data on the occurrence of protests and other forms of political participation to georeferenced data on projects financed by the Chinese government. We find that cells which receive a larger number of projects are more likely to experience protests. Further, our analysis suggests that citizens' heightened perception of China's rising influence on the domestic economy and lowered trust in the local government are two channels through which projects might motivate local protests. (c) 2021 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

First published:16 September 2019 This paper investigates the factors driving manufacturing growth accelerations in a sample of 134 developing countries over the period 1970 to 2014. We first identify growth acceleration episodes of manufacturing value added (MVA) by their year of initiation and according to a country's income classification. We then estimate a probit model to explain what factors predict these MVA growth accelerations. Our results show that human capital and institutions represent contextual factors that favor the growth of manufacturing, together with macroeconomic policies related to investment, and openness to foreign trade and capital. We also find that most of these factors not only foster episodic accelerations of industry, but they contribute as well to a sustained process of industrialization that characterized the process of economic growth of a few successful countries over the period 1970 to 2014. Government of Japan through the Development Cooperation Trust Fund

This paper analyses the factors determining the establishment of backward linkages and their key features once established. To carry out our analysis, we exploit an original survey conducted in 2011 on roughly 1500 investors based in Vietnam. We show that some characteristics of the investor firm, including size, productivity, experience and autonomy in decision-making, affect the capacity of linkages to create a larger network of local suppliers. In addition, we show that it is the provision of a good investment climate, and more importantly of key business support services, that mainly influences the capacity of investors to trigger knowledge and other key resources' transfer to their local suppliers. (C) 2018 The Society for Policy Modeling. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

This paper analyses the impact of trade liberalization on local labour markets in Ethiopia, with a focus on the gender dimension of employment. By exploiting rich micro-level data on Ethiopian workers, we evaluate the effect of the Ethiopian trade reforms on the changes and composition of employment, adopting as unit of analysis Ethiopian districts. We find that districts more exposed to trade liberalization experienced reductions in their employment levels, especially in female employment. We also show that reductions in (agricultural) input tariffs triggers a process of sectoral reallocation from agriculture to services and that this process is particularly pronounced for women. This in turns contributes to increase sectoral segregation.

This work analyzes the conceptual metaphors of depression in a corpus of 23 blogs written in Catalan by people suffering major depressive disorder. Its main aim was comparative, in order to check whether metaphors detected in previous studies were also used in a new genre and a new language. Their use was confirmed, thus reinforcing the metaphors¿ relevance and their conceptual (i.e. non language-dependent) nature. Furthermore, the study broadens the scope of the conceptualization of life with depression with a set of metaphors not attested before, mostly related to social, communicative and medical factors. The results suggest that the containment and constraint that characterize a crucial part of the metaphorical discourse of depression are not only imposed by the disorder itself, but also by contextual factors (such as stigma, lack of communication, or the medical practice perceived as a repressive power) that can have a significant impact on the lives people with depression lead. They also suggest that the very nature of blogging as a genre allows these people to provide more accurate depictions of their condition, thus providing a more comprehensive account of metaphors of life with depression and potentially empowering them.

This paper uses geographically disaggregated data to investigate the role of foreign aid as a pull factor for internal migration in Malawi over the period 1998–2008. Employing a standard gravity model of migration, we show a positive relationship between the volume of foreign assistance a district receives and the number of immigrants. While aid makes districts more attractive as migrant destinations, there is no evidence of a counterbalancing push factor effect on internal mobility. We also dig deeper into the mechanisms through which foreign aid can shape internal migration decisions. According to our results, the positive welfare effects of foreign assistance manifest themselves not only through a rise in economic opportunities, but also in improved access to public services in recipient districts.

This paper provides new empirical evidence on the relative productivity disadvantage of female-owned firms compared with male-owned firms in a developing country setting. We rely on a large panel of manufacturing firms based on an annual census run by the Central Statistical Agency of Ethiopia. Our preferred estimation shows a 12% difference in levels of total factor productivity between female- and male-owned firms. Drawing on novel quantile approaches to formally compare productivity distributions, we also dig deeper into some of the potential mechanisms underlying this gender-based firm productivity gap. Our findings suggest that various forces are at work. Most female-owned firms seem to concentrate in certain less productive subsectors, and only very few succeed in standing out. Moreover, lower productivity of female-owned firms is shown to relate to a combination of observed firm characteristics and unobserved structural factors that varies according to a firm’s position in the overall productivity distribution.

We examine the role of road infrastructure in determining the impact of a reduction in input tariffs on firm productivity. We combine new geo-spatial data on road improvements in Ethiopia with establishment level data on manufacturing firms that allow us to estimate physical productivity. Results show that an input tariff reduction is associated with a larger increase in firm productivity in areas where better roads improve access to other intranational markets. Roads magnify pass-through of tariff reductions to imported input prices and also incentivize firms to exploit this cost advantage to enhance productivity. Road infrastructure hence complements trade liberalization.

First published online: 09 July 2020 This paper examines whether and to what extent markups can influence structural transformation in a developing country by creating entry barriers. We exploit information from the Ethiopian annual census of manufacturing establishments to estimate markups and their dispersion at industry and woreda-industry-wide levels. We then analyse the relationship between markup dispersion and firm entry rates in local markets. Results show that higher markup dispersion significantly correlates with lower entry rates into a market, even in the presence of expected positive average markups. Specifically, an increase in dispersion from its median to the values at the 90(th)percentile of the distribution is related to a 4.2% point lower entry rate. This result is robust to different estimation methods as well as to different definitions of the key variables.

First published online: 02 August 2020 This paper exploits a firm-level dataset for nineteen sub-Saharan African countries that provides information on the share of total sales to government entities to provide new insights into the relative importance of participation in public procurement activity for different types of firms. The data suggest that foreign-owned firms often account for a large share of total public procurement, illustrating the importance of FDI as a channel to contest procurement markets. Participation in public procurement is positively associated with different measures of firm performance. This is most strongly the case for domestic firms, especially small companies, and firms engaged in manufacturing activities. The positive association increases with the share of foreign firms in total public procurement, suggesting more open policy environments enhance local competitiveness.

We combine data on Chinese development projects with data from Demographic and Health Surveys to study the impact of Chinese aid on household welfare in sub-Saharan Africa. We use a novel methodology to test the effect of Chinese aid on three important development outcomes: education, health, and nutrition. For each outcome, we use difference-in-difference estimations to compare household areas near Chinese project sites to control areas located farther away, before and after receiving Chinese aid. This empirical strategy rules out many confounding factors that can bias measuring the impact of Chinese aid on our outcome variables. First, we find that Chinese projects significantly improve education and child mortality in treatment areas, but do not significantly affect nutrition. Second, social sector projects have a larger effect on outcomes than economic projects. Third, we do not find significant effects for projects that ended more than five years before the post-treatment survey wave. Our results are robust to a host of robustness checks.

This article empirically investigates the effect of structural transformation on wage inequality in Asia, using industry-level data for three skill groups of workers. While structural transformation, associated with technological progress, productivity catching-up, and capital deepening, has contributed to Asias sustained growth, its effect on income inequality remains uncertain. Our results show that the process of economic transformation has exacerbated inequality in the region by increasing the relative share of high-skilled workers in total compensation. This is mainly due to a shift toward more productiveand more intensive in the use of skilled laboractivities both within and between industries. However, we also find that policy responses, especially investments in education, mitigate the increase in inequality.

This paper analyses the drivers of successful industrialization in developing countries. We consider two different periods, 1970-1990 and 1991-2014, likely to be affected by different patterns of industrialization due to major political, technological and organizational changes. We subsequently develop a methodology to identify a small group of countries for each period, which have exhibited a pattern of industrialization that is not only remarkable in absolute terms, but also sustained. Our analysis reveals that successful industrialization is driven by a combination of factors, including a country's initial economic conditions, factor endowments and other characteristics, such as demography and geography. We also show that other variables that policymakers can control play a crucial role. This includes, among others, the promotion of investments (both public and privately funded) and education; the management of trade and capital openness; financial sector development and the promotion of both macroeconomic and institutional stability. (C) 2018 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

The local sourcing of intermediate products is one the main channels for foreign direct investment (FM) spillovers. This paper investigates whether and how participation and positioning in the global value chains (GVCs) of host countries is associated to local sourcing by foreign investors. Matching two firm level data sets on 19 Sub-Saharan African countries and Vietnam to country-sector level measures of GVC involvement, we find that more intense GVC participation and upstream specialization are associated to a higher share of inputs sourced locally by foreign investors. These effects are larger in countries with stronger rule of law and better education. (C) 2018 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license.

We look at how improving roads can affect jobs and structural transformation. We use a novel geocoded dataset covering the universe of Ethiopian roads and match this information with individual data to identify the effects of improvements in road infrastructure on the creation, quality, and sectoral distribution of jobs over the period 1994-2013. We find that, at the district level, higher market potential due to better roads contributes to the creation of new jobs, reduces the share of agricultural workers, and increases that of workers in the services sector but not in manufacturing.

We examine the complementary role of road infrastructure in determining the impact of a reduction in input tariffs on firm productivity. We combine newly constructed geo-spatial data from Ethiopia on road improvements under the Ethiopian Road Sector Development Program with detailed establishment level data on manufacturing firms. To explore the impact of roads, we construct a measure of market access capturing the intensity of possible road connections between the town in which a firm is located and other intranational markets. Road improvements under the program give us rich spatial and time variation in market access. We find strong complementarity between roads and input tariff liberalization. A reduction in the input tariff is associated with a larger increase in firm productivity in areas with better market access. Our study highlights the role of roads in shaping the effects of trade liberalization on firms.

This paper analyzes the impact of Chinese competition on developed countries export prices, with a focus on Italy. After a theoretical discussion of the channels affecting export prices in presence of competitors from low income countries, we estimate the pricing behavior of two major manufacturing sectors, consumer goods and machinery, distinguishing destination markets according to their income level. Results show that export competition from China has affected Italian price strategies over the period 2000-08, in an idiosyncratic way according to the income level of importers, sector and technology level of products exported. Contrary to what observed for other high-income countries, we find that Italy has followed a very specific strategy to face Chinese competition. Instead of changing “between sector”, moving up to the technology ladder, Italy has kept its specialization in traditional sectors and has upgraded the quality of its low-tech and labor-intensive products, when in direct competition with Chinese ones. For higher technology products, on the other hand, it has adjusted prices downward to reduce Chinese competitive pressure, especially in segments where it does not hold a comparative advantage, while it has fostered differentiation only for some niche products within the sectors with higher specialization.

This paper exploits a firm-level dataset for nineteen Sub-Sharan African countries that provides information on the share of total sales to government entities to provide new insights into the relative importance of participation in public procurement activity for different types of firms. We investigate whether participation in public procurement is associated with realization of the types of goals that underlie industrial policy – an improvement in measures of firm performance – and find that firms that sell a larger share of their output to government entities have better productivity performance. This is most strongly the case for domestically-owned firms, especially small companies, firms engaged in manufacturing activities and those located in the capital city. A positive relationship between participation in public procurement and performance is not observed for foreign-owned firms or companies that are in the service sector.

This article uses firm-level data from company income tax and customs declarations from South Africa to analyse the complementary relationship between direct access to imported intermediate inputs and firm exports in the manufacturing industry. There are two main findings. The first is on firm heterogeneity, showing that firms that import and export consistently demonstrate premiums in terms of productivity, employment, wages and capital intensity in production compared to firms that do not trade, or only export or import. The second supports the hypothesis that importing raises exports, especially if inputs are sourced from advanced economies.

Published online: 19 December 2017 Germany and Italy are the largest manufacturing producers in Europe and export over 70% of their products to OECD countries. While they share many characteristics, they are also diverse in term of specialization and destination markets. Italy has a productive structure largely based on labour intensive sectors, while Germany is mainly specialized in high-tech goods. We study whether these characteristics make the two countries vulnerable in different ways to the competitive pressure by emerging economies, especially China, which experienced the strongest increase in export market share during the last decades. We discuss the impact of China on the export performance of Italy and Germany on OECD markets. Using data for the period 1995-2009, we implement a novel model to account for two important data characteristics: their hierarchical hidden structure (captured by a multilevel model) and the heterogeneity of the export shares (captured by a quantile approach). Results show that Chinese competition on Italy's and Germany's market shares differ by sectors, but, on average, Italy is not more vulnerable than Germany. These results are relevant for policy implications and for an ex-post analysis of the best response' to the Chinese competition.

We explore the impact of FDI and imports on the upgrading of African exports. We find that South South flows impact differently from North South ones on the ability of recipients to absorb the positive spillovers. Results support the view that South South integration has a strong potential for accelerating structural transformation in the continent. South South FDI foster diversification in key low-tech industries such as agro-industry and textiles, and raise the average quality of manufacturing exports, while importing from the South increases the ability to expand the variety of manufactured exports and to introduce more advanced goods in less-diversified economies. Published version of EUI RSCAS WP 2013/75 Global Governance Programme-68

Five chapters of this book are based on EUI RSCAS Migration Policy Centre (MPC) Research Reports issued between 2013 and 2014.

This paper examines how Chinese firms acquire knowledge and experience in international markets by attracting returnees using an original firm level survey from Guangdong province. It finds that there is a strong and positive relation between a firm's choice of hiring returnees and its propensity to embark in FDI. Moreover, it shows that not all returnees contribute equally to firms' internationalization. It is mainly those individuals in the most strategic functions, such as management and sales to determine both the propensity and the level of overseas direct investment. Finally, it finds that the presence of returnees is particularly effective for less experienced firms since it can help reduce the time taken to build capabilities and provide direct access to the knowledge necessary to invest abroad. (C) 2016 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

We contribute to the long debated issue of whether inward foreign direct investment (FDI) can stimulate investment in developing countries by introducing a novel measure of FDI, based on industry-level data. Our results suggest a positive impact of FDI on total investment – measured as the ratio of gross fixed capital formation to GDP – but only if multinational enterprises engage in manufacturing production; the same does not hold for other business activities. Moreover, we find evidence of a more beneficial impact of foreign investors from advanced economies compared to developing ones. Our results are robust to alternative measures of FDI, as well as to instrumental variable approaches accounting for the potential endogeneity of FDI.

We empirically analyze the host-country determinants of Chinese outward direct investments (ODI) in the period from 2003 to 2008, using disaggregated data by country and sector and distinguishing between state-owned or controlled enterprises (SOEs) and privately-owned firms. Our results show that the pattern of Chinese ODI differs according to corporate ownership. Private firms are attracted by large markets and host-country strategic assets and are averse to economic and political risks when choosing investment locations abroad. Differently, state-owned or controlled enterprises follow the strategic needs of their home country and invest more in natural resource sectors, being largely indifferent to the political and economic conditions in the host countries.

The empirical literature on China's outward foreign direct investment mainly relies on aggregate data from official statistics, but the reliability of such data is currently a matter of concern because it does not take account of relevant features such as industry breakdown, ownership structure and entry mode. A novel firm-level database, EMENDATA, compiled by matching data from several available sources on various types of cross-border deals and including information on group structure, provides a more accurate picture and enables new empirical analyses of the rapidly increasing presence of Chinese companies abroad. Based on this database, this paper offers a more precise assessment of the geographical and sector specialization patterns of Chinese outward foreign direct investment into Europe and suggests new avenues for future research.

This paper uses firm-level data from company tax declarations to analyse the complementary relationship between direct access to imported intermediate inputs and manufacturing firm performance in South Africa. There are three main findings. The first is on firm heterogeneity, showing that importers consistently demonstrate premiums in terms of productivity, employment, wages, and capital intensity in production compared to firms that do not trade. The second supports the hypothesis of firm learning by importing. Finally, we show that importing also has implications for exporting, especially if inputs are sourced from advanced economies.

This paper adopts multilevel analysis to study the agglomeration-performance nexus for domestic firms in sub-Saharan Africa. We show that contextual factors can explain up to 30 % of the variance in firms productivity, more than half of which depends on the geographic location. Our results show also that African firms productivity is positively correlated to the size of the agglomeration when they locate in larger cities specialized in different sectors, while the relation turns negative when they face direct competition from firms in the same industry. These effects are similar in the services and the manufacturing industries, even if in the latter positive spillovers are found to be conditional to the presence of backward and forward linkages with nearby firms. Finally, we are able to show that these effects are also confirmed when domestic firms locate close to foreign multinationals, especially those coming from the South.

While structural transformation, driven by technological progress, productivity growth, and capital deepening, has contributed to Asia’s sustained rapid growth, its effect on income inequality is uncertain. The central objective of our paper is to empirically examine the effect of structural change on wage inequality in Asia, using industry-level data for three skill groups of workers. Our evidence indicates that structural change, pushed by productivity catch-up with advanced economies, capital deepness, and the shift of the economic structures to more skill-intensive industries, has exacerbated inequality in the region. However, we also find that policy responses, especially investment in education matching the higher demand for skills and competitive exchange rates, can mitigate the increase in inequality.

The Chile Solidario programme is an innovative conditional cash transfer (CCT) in the Latin American context, aimed at addressing specifically the multidimensional nature of poverty. This paper, using data from the Panel Caracterizacion Socioeconomica Nacional (CASEN) Survey for the years 2001 and 2006, presents an impact evaluation of this programme. Using matching techniques to compare participants in the programme with a control group, and a difference-in-differences estimator, we evaluate its impact on various socioeconomic dimensions and results at the household and child level are differentiated. At the household-level, we find that the programme has a significant impact on lifting families out of extreme poverty and that it does not have disincentive effects on labour participation. For children, we find that it has contributed to increasing participation in school for those between the ages of 6 and 15 years, and to increased enrolment with the public health services. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Published online: 3 February 2009 An important new issue on the international scene is the upsurge in market and non-market South–South relations. The aim of this paper is to understand the dynamics that lie behind the recent Chinese move into Africa by empirically exploring the determinants of Sino-African relationships. In order to have a comprehensive picture, the analysis takes into consideration the main channels of commercial and political interactions: outward foreign direct investment (OFDI), trade and aid (international economic cooperation). The empirical analysis utilises a panel data set, from 1998 to 2005, for 43 African countries. The econometric estimates for three simultaneous equations are based on an instrumental variables method. Results show that the Chinese move into Africa is driven by strategic interaction among the three channels (FDI, trade and economic cooperation) as well as by pull factors, i.e. the characteristics of the receiving countries in terms of natural resource endowments and their market potential.

This paper explores the relation between supply-chain participation and the internationalization of firms. We show that even small and less productive firms, if involved in production chains, can take advantage of reduced costs of entry and economies of scale that enhance their probability of exporting. The empirical analysis is carried out on an Original database, obtained by merging and matching balance-sheet data with data from a survey on over 25,000 Italian firms, which include direct information on the involvement in supply chains. We find a positive and significant relation between being part of a supply chain and the probability of exporting, as well as the intensive margin of trade. The number of foreign markets served (the extensive margin), on the other hand, does not seem to be affected. We also investigate whether being in different positions along the chain, i.e., upstream or downstream, matters, and we find that downstream producers tend to benefit more. Our results are robust to different specifications, estimation methods, and the inclusion of the control variables typically used in heterogeneous firms models.

This paper analyses differences in productivity of foreign affiliates of emerging market multinationals (EMNEs) from the BRICS against their counterparts from developed countries and domestic MNEs. Based on a large database on foreign affiliates in Europe, results find EMNEs at the bottom of the productivity ladder, with an average productivity gap of around 30 percentage points compared to more established competitors. The paper also shows that this effect is not homogeneously distributed since it varies in terms of sectorial distribution and technology intensity of activities performed, as well as by geographic destination. Moreover, firms’ heterogeneity plays a key role given that productivity differentials are largely accounted for the least productive firms, while those at the top of the distribution tend to reach similar performances than their more established competitors, especially in services.

Published online: 15 Apr 2015 This paper analyses the long run determinants of wage inequality in the manufacturing sector for a group of East Asian countries that have experienced rapid structural transformations in recent decades. In line with the skill biased technological change hypothesis, our results show that within manufacturing structural change which fosters the participation of higher skilled workers is a strong determinant of the wage premium. However, the paper also highlights an unusual feature of the East Asian model, showing how well-designed education policies, prudent macroeconomic management and selective policies towards foreign capital can help to buffer the pressure of structural change on wage inequality, even in an open economy context.

Using new firm-level data from the Emerging Multinationals' Events and Networks DATAbase (EMENDATA), this paper investigates the effects on Chinese firms of Outward FDI (OFDI) into advanced European countries. Propensity score matching is combined with a difference-in-difference (DiD) estimator to reduce the problem of self-selection of treated firms in foreign markets, and to eliminate time-invariant and unobservable differences between those firms and the controls. The results provide robust evidence supporting the view that China's OFDI so far have had a positive impact on domestic activities in enhancing firms' productivity and scales of operation, measured by sales and employment. When we distinguish among investments on the basis of entry mode, accounting for endogeneity in the selection process, acquisitions facilitate early access to intangible assets, but are detrimental to financial performance, while greenfield investments have a stronger impact on the scale and productivity of Chinese multinationals investing in Europe.

Using a new firm-level database, EMENDATA, this paper investigates the effects on Chinese multinational enterprises of Outward FDI (OFDI) into advanced European countries. Propensity score matching is combined with a difference-in-difference estimator to reduce the problems of self-selection of treated firms in foreign markets and to eliminate time-invariant and unobservable differences between those firms and the controls. The results provide robust evidence in support of the view that China’s OFDI had so far a positive impact on domestic activities in enhancing firms’ productivity and scales of operation, as measured by assets, sales and employment. Distinguishing among such investments on the basis of entry mode shows that acquisitions facilitate early access to intangible assets but are detrimental to financial performance, whereas greenfield investments have a positive impact on the scale and productivity of Chinese investors. Publication keywords: outward FDI, reverse spillovers, performance, Chinese multinationals