Essays on intra-industry spillovers from FDI in developing countries : a firm-level analysis with a focus on sub-Saharan Africa

Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) is widely associated with potential spillover benefits leading to productivity gains in host countries. The argument is that when foreign firms invest in a host country they not only invest capital, they often also transfer proprietary knowledge to their subsidiaries.
With the expectation that host country firms would be able to benefit from this knowledge transfer, many developing countries introduced policies that encourage FDI via a range of incentives. However, the resulting empirical evidence on the actual spillovers is sobering.