R&D and Export Intensities in Automotive Parts Firms in China, Malaysia, Philippines and Taiwan: Does Ownership Matter?

This paper seeks to examine the importance of ownership in R&D intensities and export ownership in the automotive parts firms in China, Indonesia, Malaysia, Philippines and Taiwan. Consistent with the portfolio and ownership, location and internationalization theories of foreign direct investment about asset specific advantages, the pooled regressions show higher R&D intensities in local firms than in foreign firms. Export-orientation was only highly correlated with RD intensities in the local samples. The results also show foreign ownership to be highly correlated with export-orientation in the pooled regressions but not in the individual country regressions.