Impact of foreign ownership on firm productivity: evidence from Japanese manufacturing firms

This article presents the methodology to examine the impact of foreign ownership on firm productivity using firm-level data of Japanese manufacturing firms from 2000 to 2016, which include 1,458 listed companies in Japan. Firm productivity is represented by total factor productivity (TFP), which is estimated by the Olley–Pakes semiparametric estimation method to minimize the simultaneity problem in production function estimation. In the estimation of the impact of foreign ownership on firm productivity, system GMM estimation is applied to address a possible reversal causality problem between foreign ownership and firm productivity. Based on the case of the manufacturing firms in Japan, this article shows that 1 percentage point increase in foreign ownership increases the firm productivity by 0.06 percent. The evidence of this article supports the positive impact of foreign ownership on firm productivity and further implies that the promotion of foreign investment could be a policy option to improve firm productivity. Highlights This study analyzes the impact of foreign ownership on firm productivity. Firm-level data of the Japanese manufacturing firms from 2000 to 2016 are analyzed. The result supports the positive impact of foreign ownership on firm productivity.