Eristian Wibisono
Abstract:
Macroeconomic and microeconomic literature has raised the impact of FDI knowledge and technology spillovers in the host economy. However, there is still a research gap in addressing this topic in the knowledge economy. Based on a comprehensive literature review, this paper demonstrates the performance of FDI spillovers and their impact on the productivity of domestic firms in emerging and transition economies in Europe. Poland is the largest country in the Visegrad group but provides limited studies on FDI experience. The paper then shows the geographic distribution of FDI across Polish regions, where the western and eastern regions appear very different. There is a significant positive impact of FDI presence on the productivity of foreign-affiliated domestic firms. Unfortunately, the presence of FDI in these regions is not significant enough to induce knowledge and technology spillovers to improve firm productivity. The effectiveness of FDI knowledge and technology in boosting the productivity of the local economy may be worth questioning. Therefore, comparable spatial studies are encouraged to be conducted in future research with a more complete and robust data structure which is recognized as a limitation of this study.