Linkages and Spillovers from Foreign Ownership in the Indian Pharmaceutical Firms

The paper examines the spillover and linkage effects from the presence of foreign firms in the Indian pharmaceutical industry. A comprehensive panel data consisting of nearly 200 firms from 1989 to 2000 was used in the current study. The recent semi-parametric estimation methods as suggested by Olley and Pakes (1996) and Levinsohn and Petrin (2003) were adopted to account for the endogeneity in the input demand. Our results suggest the existence of positive and significant spillover from the foreign equity ownership in the Indian pharmaceutical industry. However, we also found negative and significant spillovers from
the backward linkages with foreign firms. The negative spillovers from the backward linkages suggest the possibility of large technology and efficiency gap between local and foreign firms. The results also suggest that institutional arrangements that protect intellectual property rights such as product patents as opposed to process patents will be important for establishing positive linkages and spillovers between local and foreign firms in the Indian pharmaceutical industry.