We develop a theory of a multinational corporation’s optimal mode of entry in a new market. The foreign firm can choose between a licensing agreement, a wholly owned subsidiary or shared control (joint venture). In an environment in which property rights are insecure, opportunism is possible, and the identification of new business opportunities is costly, we show that the relationship between t...

This paper examines the relationship between regional economic integration and FDI in North America, where two RIAs have been established over the past decade: a bilateral free trade agreement between Canada and the U.S. (CUSTA) and a trilateral agreement (NAFTA) incorporating Mexico as well. The North American experiences suggest substantially more modest impacts of regional trade agreements o...

The institutional structure of global commodity chains and cross-border production networks has a profound impact on how the benefits of globalized production are distributed. This paper engages with this issue by developing a model that combines the insights of earlier unequal exchange theorists and new work on global commodity chains to clarify the distributive dynamics of the expansion of lo...

This paper investigates whether there is convergence in Total Factor Productivity at the establishment level, to the technological frontier. We find evidence of convergence to the frontier, which suggests the existence of technological spillovers. The speed of catch-up does not appear to vary with the extent of foreign presence in the industry. But foreign multinationals do make up a significan...

This paper studies the impact of trade liberalization in terms of tariff cuts within the Eastern European enlargement on German and Austrian firm productivity. Unique matching of data from 1994 to 2003 suggests that tariff reductions raise parent firm productivity significantly. A ten percentage point decrease in tariff rates can lead to total factor productivity gains of up to 2 percent. The d...

This study presents the empirical results for the relationship between the use of hedging techniques and the characteristics of UK multinational enterprises (MNEs). All the firms in the sample hedge foreign exchange (FX) exposure. The results indicate that UK firms focus on a very narrow set of hedging techniques. They make much greater use of derivatives than internal hedging techniques. The d...

Post-transitional labour markets of the Central and East European countries have been characterised by marked regional differences. This paper will concentrate on the spatial pattern of job creation, determined by the allocation decisions of foreign and domestic investors. Regions with the highest employment rates may boast high doses of FDI inflows, while low employment regions have been suffe...

This paper investigates the two way relationship between R&D and export activity. In particular, we concern ourselves with the question whether R&D stimulates exports and, perhaps more importantly, whether export activity leads to increasing innovative activity in terms of R&D (learning by exporting). We use two unique firm level databases for Great Britain and the Republic of Ireland and compa...

This paper analyzes the behavior of monopoly firm serving its products to two countries. The main focus of this paper is on how the product-quality choice in different markets are related with the cost structure of the firm. First, This paper examines the effects of production and R&D costs on the product quality separately, and then discusses the general case where the both costs exists. This ...

We use a linked employer-employee data set from Germany to estimate the wage effect of foreignaffiliates in (the former) East and West Germany. In addition, the wage effects of the large number of West German affiliates which are located in East Germany are also considered. The implemented techniques allow us to control both for workerand plant-level unobserved components of earnings. We find l...