Abstract

Little is known about the performance of service firms and its relations with foreign direct investment (FDI), in part due to methodological and conceptual challenges in measuring service performance. This article suggests two possible measures of service firm performance: total factor productivity (TFP) and markups, with modification needed to improve those measures for the service sector. Using these measures, it examines service firm performance from 1997 to 2007 in Tunisia, where the service sector accounts for 60% of GDP but faces high protection and complex entry barriers. Then, it investigates whether variations in performance can be explained by FDI. It finds that FDI firms have higher TFP but lower markups than local firms, with significant variations across sub-service sectors.

中文翻译：

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服务公司的业绩和外资所有权

摘要

关于服务公司的绩效及其与外国直接投资（FDI）的关系知之甚少，部分原因是衡量服务绩效的方法和概念上的挑战。本文提出了两种可能的服务公司绩效衡量指标：全要素生产率（TFP）和加价，需要进行修改以改善服务行业的这些指标。使用这些方法，它考察了突尼斯服务公司从1997年到2007年的绩效，突尼斯的服务业占GDP的60％，但面临着高度的保护和复杂的进入壁垒。然后，研究是否可以通过外国直接投资来解释绩效的变化。研究发现，与本地公司相比，外国直接投资公司的全要素生产率较高，但加价幅度较低，子服务行业之间差异很大。