Innovation performance convergence:evidence from Chinese listed OFDI companies

Targeting to investigate whether outward foreign direct investment (OFDI) companies act at higher level of innovation performance and their dynamic evolution, this paper applies micro data of Chinese listed OFDI companies to measure the innovation performance from innovation efficiency and innovation quality respectively. Empirical study reveals that the innovation performance of OFDI companies is significantly better than that of non-OFDI counterparties, and for SOEs with OFDI, innovation performance is significantly more efficient than that of non-SOEs. The convergence analysis fails to identify sigma-convergence from the innovation performance of OFDI, but detects absolute beta-convergence successfully although only conditional beta-convergence from SOEs group. It supports assumption of catch-up effect of innovation performance among companies, and entities with low innovation performance actually enjoy faster innovation development speed than performance leaders. The conclusion has guiding significance for different types of enterprises to formulate foreign investment policies and for the government to formulate innovation and development policies.