Chalongphob Sussangkarn opened the discussion with the observation that the authors' conclusions appear plausible given the accord between their findings and the results from Sussangkarn's recent work with Yung Chul Park and Sung Jin Kang (2011). Sussangkarn's project tracked data on 145 Malaysian industry-level sectors between 2000 and 2005, examining the presence and strength of backward, forward, and horizontal spillovers on employment, exports, and TFP.
Deborah Swenson asked the authors to provide more information on the time and industry variation in their spillover variables, since the failure to identify spillover effects does not prove that spillover effects were minor. In particular, if the time and sector variation of the FDI variables was minimal, the data would not be capable of revealing spillover effects in an estimation framework (which includes industry and time fixed effects), even if spillovers were present.
Swenson also suggested that the authors should discuss whether...