최근 세계 경제의 글로벌화에 따라 경쟁력 강화를 위한 국내기업의 해외직접투자가 꾸준히 증가하고 있다. 이에 본 연구는 해외에 활발하게 직접투자를 하고 있는 국내 기업의 자료를 활용하여 해외직접투자가 국내 기업의 경영행태에 어떤 영향을 주는지 분석하였다. 해외직접투자한 국내 기업에 대한 정보가 매우 제약된 상황에서 본 연구는 2003년 해외투자한 제조업체를 찾아 이를 한국신용정보(주)의 KIS-Value 자료와 연계하여 재무정보를 확보하였다. 먼저 통상최소자승법(OLS)을 활용하여 분석한 결과 해외직접투자를 실시한 기업의 경우 해외투자를 하지 않는 기업에 비해 연구개발활동 수준이 낮은 반면 노동자 1인당 매출액은 높은 것으로 나타났다. 그러나 해외직접투자가 경영활동에 미치는 영향을 보다 엄밀하게 추정하기 위하여 Difference-in-Difference 분석을 실시하였다. 분석결과 해외직접투자는 국내투자를 유의하게 상승시키는 것으로 나타났다. 이러한 결과는 Desai et al. (2005a, 2005b)와 유사하게 국내 기업의 해외직접투자가 국내에서의 투자와 상당한 보완관계가 있음을 확인할 수 있었다.
As the globalization is deepening, recently Korean firms have increased outward foreign direct investment (FDI) to enhance their competitiveness at home as well as abroad. This paper empirically investigates the effects of outward FDI on Korean firms’ activities at home. In two features, this study is distinguished from previous studies in Korea. First, it is unique in that it tries a firm-level data analysis of the FDI effect, since the examination of the FDI effect at the firm level has been seldom in Korea. Second, it examines the effect of outward FDI, while most studies focus on the effect of inward FDI on the firms’ activities at home. Information for the Korean firms which performed outward FDI is very limited, and the data are not available directly. Thus, we contrived a firm-level data set by connecting KIS-Value data to the financial data of the manufacturing firms which had outward FDI in 2003. To examine the effects of outward FDI, the paper uses the Difference-in-Difference (DID) model as well as the Ordinary Least Squares (OLS) model. It is well known that the DID model is useful to analyze the effects of key factors when there is a cross-sectional specific effect, since this method eliminates the common environment effect of the firms. Thus, we take the result by the DID model more significantly and the result by the OLS model as a reference. As the proxies for firms’ activities, it takes R&D level, sales level, and domestic investment level. The OLS analysis shows that outward FDI has a significantly negative effect on R&D activities, a significantly positive effect on sales, and an insignificant negative effect on domestic investment. On the other hand, the DID model shows that outward FDI has all the positive effects on R&D activities, sales, and domestic investment, but a significant effect only on domestic investment. From the results of the DID model, we can infer the complementary relationship between the outward FDI and domestic investments in Korea.