Research on Foreign Ownership Applied in R&D Investment of Chinese GEM Companies

Abstract

This paper is to explore that if foreign ownership exactly affects on R&D investment of Chinese GEM companies. We use six variables, including RDS (the ratio of R&D and operating income), the proportion of foreign ownership, company size (the logarithm of total assets), gearing ratio, the proportion of the top five shareholders, and the location, to construct the regression model to verify the impact of foreign ownership on R&D investment for 153 listed firm sample during 2009-2014, which has removed companies without R&D investment. We find that foreign ownership and enterprise R&D investment indeed exists positive correlation, but not significantly; further investigation found that foreign ownership will not improve enterprise performance when it promotes R&D investment, but exist a negative correlation relationship. Therefore, such a relationship is important for company to control the proportion of foreign ownership to manage the ownership structure.