Focusing on Japanese, Korean, Taiwanese, and Chinese firms in the manufacturing sector, this paper examines productivity catch-up at the firm level using the distance from the technology frontier as a direct measure of the potential for catch-up. We also examine the role of absorptive capacity...

We investigate whether previous findings of only limited effects of investing abroad on the performance of parent firms can be explained by the aggregation of heterogeneous effects depending on the motive for foreign direct investment (FDI), sector, and location. Our results suggest, in line...