Natasha Agarwal

Credit Constraints and FDI Spillovers in China

This paper examines whether credit constraints affect Chinese firms’ absorption of productivity spillovers from foreign firms. Using firm-level data for 2001-2005, we find evidence of positive spillovers originating from FDI from countries other than Hong Kong, Macau and Taiwan for non-state owned Chinese firms operating in the same industry and province. Our main finding is that domestic firms operating in industries characterised by a greater reliance on external finance, our measure of credit constraints, enjoy lower (and even negative) spillovers from the activity of foreign-owned firms. This result is robust to the inclusion of a wide variety of other industry-level characteristics interacting with the activity of foreign firms.

Balancing the regulation and taxation of banking

This study gives an overview of bank taxation as an alternative to prudential regulations or non-revenue taxation. We review existing bank taxation with a view to eliminating distortions in the tax system, which have incentivized banks to engage in risky activities in the past. We furthermore analyze taxation of financial instruments trading and taxation of banking products and services and their ability to finance resolution mechanisms for banks and to ensure their stability. In this respect, we put forward the following arguments: (1) that a financial transaction tax is economically inefficient and potentially costly for the economy and may not protect taxpayers; (2) that a bank levy used to finance deposit guarantee and bank resolution mechanisms is potentially useful for financial stability, but that it poses the threat of double taxation, together with the proposed Basel-III Liquidity Coverage Ratio; and (3) that we support the elimination of exemption from value added tax (VAT) for financial services in order to provide banks with a level playing field, while retaining exemption for basic payments services. This is expected to improve efficiency by reducing the wasteful use of financial services.

FDI Spillovers in China: Connecting the Missing Link between Micro and Macro

Using a panel of 20,460 Chinese manufacturing firms over the period 2001-2005, we apply both parametric and non-parametric estimation techniques to examine the underlying relationship between the economic development of the host province and FDI spillovers. We find that provincial economic development does not systematically influence FDI spillovers. Moreover, there exists considerable heterogeneity in the FDI spillovers not only across the 29 provinces, municipalities and autonomous regions but also across the 10 manufacturing sectors within each of the 29 provinces, municipalities and autonomous regions. This suggests that FDI spillovers in China may be affected by a combination of both the characteristics of the sector within a province and the characteristics of the province itself.