PUBLICATIONS & REPORTS

Contents Introduction

This paper investigates how foreign multinational enterprises (MNEs) contributed to exports by

Thai manufacturing plants at the industry level in 2006. The mean export-sales ratio (export propensities) in heavily-foreign MNEs with foreign ownership shares of 90 percent or more exceeded 50 percent and heavily-foreign MNEs accounted for one-third of plant exports. Minority-foreign (10-49% foreign shares) and majority-foreign (50-89% shares) MNEs combined to account for another one-fifth of plant exports but had lower export propensities, about 30 percent and 40 percent, respectively. The mean export propensity for local plants in 20 sample industries was only 15 percent. In large samples of all 20 industries combined, econometric estimates controlling for industry affiliation with intercept dummies as well as the effects of the scale, age, factor intensities or labor productivity, and BOI-promotion status of plants also indicated that export propensities were the highest in heavily-foreign MNEs, followed by majority-foreign MNEs, minority-foreign MNEs, and lastly by local plants. Moreover, ownership-related differences in export propensities were highly significant statistically. When inter-industry heterogeneity was more fully accounted for by allowing slope coefficients as well as intercepts to differ among the 20 industries, export propensities were the highest in heavily-foreign MNEs and significantly higher than in local plants in 12 industries. However, differences among MNE ownership groups were usually insignificant and MNE-local differentials in export propensities differed substantially among industries, suggesting it is important account for inter-industry heterogeneity as fully as possible.