Criss-Crossing Globalization : Uphill Flows of Skill-Intensive Goods and Foreign Direct Investment

Mattoo, Aaditya ; Subramanian, Arvind

关键词: ADVANCED COUNTRIES;    AFFILIATED ORGANIZATIONS;    APARTHEID;    BALANCE OF PAYMENTS;    BANK POLICY;   

DOI  :  10.1596/1813-9450-5047
RP-ID  :  WPS5047

学科分类：社会科学、人文和艺术（综合）

来源: World Bank Open Knowledge Repository

【 摘 要 】

This paper documents an unusual andpossibly significant phenomenon: the export of skills,embodied in goods, services or capital from poorer to richercountries. The authors first present a set of stylizedfacts. Then, using a measure that combines thesophistication of a country s exports with the averageincome level of destination countries, they show that theperformance of a number of developing countries - notablyChina, Mexico and South Africa - matches that of much moreadvanced countries - such as Japan, Spain and the UnitedStates. The authors create a new combined dataset on foreigndirect investment (covering greenfield investment as well asmergers and acquisitions). The analysis shows that flows offoreign direct investment to developed countries fromdeveloping countries - like Brazil, India, Malaysia andSouth Africa - as a share of their GDP, are as large asflows from developed countries - like Japan, Korea and theUnited States. The authors suggest that it is not just thecomposition of exports but their destination that matters.In both cross-sectional and panel regressions, with a rangeof controls, a measure of uphill flows of sophisticatedgoods is significantly associated with better growthperformance. These results suggest the need for a deeperanalysis of whether the benefits of development might derivenot from deifying comparative advantage but from defying it.