Explore the Relationship of Foreign Ownership and Corporate Performance in the ASEAN Countries over the US-China Trade War

This paper aims to examine whether foreign ownership could improve corporate performance in four ASEAN countries amid the US-China trade war. To enrich our understanding the role of foreign ownership in emerging market enterprises, we adopt the weighted least squares (WLS) and fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis (fsQCA) to provide robust and fruitful empirical evidences to both academics and practitioners. Our empirical results show that growth opportunity links the short-and long-term financial performance of listed firms in the ASEAN countries. Moreover, foreign ownership plays an important role on enhancing long-term performance for the firms in the ASEAN countries during the US-China trade war. The findings would fill in the gap on understanding the effect of the location shift of foreign investment during the trade war. The implications of the study would help the practitioners in managing their investment in the ASEAN countries during the US-China trade war.