Survival Analysis of Overseas Food-related Investments: The Case of the Corporate Withdrawal of Japanese Companies from Taiwan

The purpose of this paper is to analyze the factors that led to the withdrawal of Japanese food related industries from Taiwan. Under these circumstances, the survival analysis of Japanese investments in Taiwan is an interesting case study that serves to illustrate the factors affecting the stability of the overseas expansion of Japanese food related investment. In this paper, we develop a long-term (1972-2012) micro dataset about Japanese food related companies' entry into and withdrawal out of Taiwan. Using the Cox proportional hazards model for the survival analysis, we find that the probability of corporate withdrawal is significantly lower for firms with large capital and for relatively upstream industries. Further, when considering explanatory variables about Taiwanese parent corporations, we find that when the Taiwanese parent corporation is an individual entrepreneur, the probability of corporate withdrawal significantly reduced. We also introduce cluster analysis and some case studies to support the results.