Topic:Human capital and FDI location:evidence from China's college expansion

Abstract:

Human capital is believed to be critical in attracting foreign direct investment (FDI) across countries, yet less is known about this relationship at the sub-national level within host countries. In this paper, we study how human capital affects FDI location choice at the sub-national level by taking advantage of the geographical variation resulting from China's college admission expansion that began in 1999 and led to a plausibly exogenous surge of college-educated workforce after 2002.Our triple difference analvses find that human capital-intensive manufacturing industries in cities more exposed to college expansion experience larger growth in foreign-investedenterprises (FIEs) after 2002 than it prior years. This effect is more prominent in exporl oriented regionsand industries, broadly consistent wit the efficiency-seeking vertical FDI hypothesis.

Lecturer: Weidi Yuan

Weidi Yuan is currently an assistant professor at the Department of International Economics and Trade, Business School, Nanjing University.2015-2020 PhD in Economics, University of Geneva. 2014-2015 Master of Economics, University of California, Santa Barbara. 2011-2014 Bachelor of Economics (Double major), Peking University. 2010-2014 Bachelor of Japanese Language and Literature, Beijing Foreign Studies University. Worked at the headquarters of the World Trade Organization (Geneva, Switzerland) on global value chains. His research interests include international trade, development economics, and financial economics. His research results have been published in the European Economic Review and the Journal of Comparative Economics. He has chaired the National Natural Science Foundation Youth Project

Time: April8 , 202410:00-12:00

Venue: B438,Zhixin Building,CentralCampus