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NTU Management Review Vol. 34 No. 3 Dec. 2024
3. Findings
The research findings indicate that when the investments of firms in China are
profitable, a U-shaped association exists between investment performance and divestiture
decisions. That is, when profits increase, the likelihood of divestment initially increases
but subsequently decreases. However, when firms incur losses in their investments in
China, they are less likely to divest.
Furthermore, the present study develops a performance model for 479 observations of
divestiture events, and its results indicate that divesting from China is positively associated
with market performance.
Finally, the prominent presence of correction factors and decision errors helps
achieve the goal of controlling for selection bias in the analysis.
4. Implications and Research Limitations
The level of uncertainty in a host country is closely associated with its political
and economic environments and its labor market. In the case of China, changes in the
country’s political and economic environments and its labor market regulations can be
used as breakpoints for conducting comparative research on entry and exit decisions across
multiple time periods.
Furthermore, the present study employs quantitative research to investigate the
association between divestiture decisions and investment performance in China. We
employ the two-stage least squares method to address endogeneity-related problems
(Heckman, 1979). However, various endogeneity-related problems stem from
unobservable factors that can influence divestment strategies and can therefore be
attributed to an error term. This phenomenon leads to correlations between explanatory
variables and the error term. Various factors, such as the international division of labor, the
effects of supply chains, and the influence of decisions made by other firms may contribute
to this issue. Hence, qualitative research can be conducted to further explore these aspects
to further clarify the practical implications of the present findings.
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