In general, negative discussions and impressions regarding outward FDI, such as capital outflows, job losses, leakage of trade secrets, and hollowingout of domestic industries, seem to dominate. The controversy, which focused on greenfield investments in the past, seems to be widely applied to recent mergers and acquisitions (M&As). Against this backdrop, the purposeof this report is twofold: first, to improve the understanding of how the increase in Korean firms’ FDI through M&As and related innovation activities in the U.S. market affects the performance of the investing Korean firms and their domestic affiliates; and second, to provide objective long-term policy directions on outward FDI and firms’ innovation activities based on the results found using firm-level data. The following results and findings in each chapter of this report are presented as follows.

On the theoretical side, based on the theoretical model developed by Akcigit, Ates, and Impullitti (2018), Chapter 2 examines the mechanisms through which FDI can affect the incentives to innovate and the financial performance of investing firms. Market integration through M&As creates a scale effect and a competitive effect. The cost of innovation also plays a role in firms’ innovation incentives and financial performance. A spillover expected from knowledge sharing resulting from access to a new market is an additional channel. Regarding the scale effect, access to large, developed markets is one of the reasons why direct investment is a rational choice for a firm’s innovation. Large markets tend to have more intermediate resources to use and a larger pool of information to share. However, access to a new market through FDI can change the competitive structure that the investing companies face. Direct access to a foreign market creates higher expected profits if an investing firm’s innovation is successful. Still, if it is not, the firm may face stiffer competition or be forced out of the market. The degree of monopoly power is indeed the main factor determining the profits of successful innovations. However, the firm’s current profit only lasts until the next innovation occurs, and if there is no subsequentinnovation that is better than that the competitor’s, the company’s profit will decrease or it will be exited from the market. To survive, companies need to continuously invest and work on innovation. The spillover of technologies and the knowledge embedded in the R&D performed or in the patents filed as part of these efforts are another channel through which companies strive for better quality and innovation.

Based on the theoretical discussion, empirical analyses from two perspectives are conducted using firm-level data such as patent data from the USPTO, M&A data from Eikon, and the financial data of Korean firms from KED: changes in innovation activities (the number of new patent applications, the number of patents cited (backward citation), and the sum of patent applications and patents cited) and financial performance of the investing firms in the U.S. The analyses in Chapter 4 show that the innovation activities of Korean firms have improved statistically significantly after an M&A with a U.S. firm. The results show that the effect of an M&A on the number of backward citations is positive (statistically significant at the 5% level). In other words, the citations of Korean firms to innovations (patents) in the U.S. increased after the M&As compared to firms without successful M&As, confirming that M&As play a positive role in the utilization of innovations generated in the U.S. by Korean firms. We also find short-term improvements in an innovation outcome indicator of patents held by the merged firm after M&As. This suggests that the M&A investment in the U.S. by Korean firms has a positive effect on the innovation activities and innovation quality of the integrated firms.

Chapter 5 examines whether the acquisitions of U.S. patents by Korean firms affected the financial performance of their Korean parent firms (acquirers) and first-tier suppliers. The results show that the financial performance of the parent firms in terms of total sales and operating profits starts to improve two to four years after the U.S. patent acquisition. The longer the period of the patent acquisition, the better the financial performance, in terms of both magnitude and statistical significance. Specifically, an additional unit increase in the number of U.S. patent citations four to six years prior is associated with an average increase of KRW 4.3 billion in sales and KRW 1.5 billion in operating profits for Korean parent firms. It is important to note that most of the significant results come from acquirers in high-tech industries. For high-tech acquirers, U.S. patent quality, as measured by patent citations also improves the financial performance of the acquirer’s domestic first-tier suppliers. However, it appears that it takes an additional one to two years to be reflected in the subcontractors’ financial performance. Specifically, the total sales of a high-tech acquirer’s first-tier subcontractors began to show a significant positive relationship with the acquirer’s U.S. patent citation after three to five years and an even stronger positive relationship with U.S. patent acquisition after four to six years.