This paper presents three new patent-based indicators of internationalisation of technology reflecting international cooperation in research and the location of research facilities of multinational firms. They witness both an increasing trend towards the globalisation of technology in the OECD area and large cross-country differences in the extent of internationalisation. An empirical analysis ...

This paper investigates why multinational ownership is found to increase the probability that a plant will exit. It does so by using Japanese plant data linked to firm data. Plants belonging to a multinational are 9 percentage points more likely to exit when plant, firm and industry characteristics are conditioned on. We find that the “footloose” effect is attributable to multinationals closing...

Article history: Received 5 December 2011 Received in revised form 31 August 2012 Accepted 4 September 2012 Available online 11 September 2012 We investigate international joint ventures in an integrated market using a two-country model with asymmetric sizes. We show that although the domestic firm in the small country is less efficient, it is possible that the government of the small country i...

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 paper examines whether UK firms that locate their R&D activity in the USA benefit more than other UK firms from knowledge spillovers originating from US R&D. Patent data provides a firm-level measure of the location of innovative activity, which enables the identification of knowledge spillovers associated with "technology sourcing". Our identification strategy helps to address various pro...

This paper uses affiliate level data from Swedish multinationals to examine the impact of tax treaties on both overall affiliate sales and the composition of those sales. In line with previous results, we find little evidence for an effect of treaties on the level of total sales. We do, however, find that a tax treaty increases the probability of investment by a firm in a given country. In addi...

This paper analyzes the global aspects of competition policy. The effects of a merger in the global marketplace will generally be asymmetric, and consequently lead to a bias in domestic merger decisions. In order to compare different policy regimes, we ascribe general objective functions to the respective authorities and employ a stochastic notion of mergers. We show that under the territoriali...

Article history: Received 27 April 2011 Received in revised form 30 November 2011 Accepted 30 November 2011 Available online 8 December 2011 Better corporate governance can reduce the scope for increasing shareholder value and thus discourage M&A FDI inflows. Sound governance may also discourage non-M&A FDI inflows in light of the complementary relationship between M&A and non-M&A FDI. We use f...

For a firm without a readily identifiable brand name, quality reputation may solely reflect the country of origin. In this paper we endogenize country-of-origin reputations and show that these selffulfilling reputations determine not only the average quality of a country’s exports but also the type of products in which a country specializes. Hence, the pattern of international trade can be dete...

When multinational firms expand their operations in tax havens, do they divert activity from non-havens? Much of the debate on tax competition presumes that the answer to this question is yes. This paper offers a model for examining the relationship between activity in havens and non-havens, and discusses the implications of recent evidence in light of that model. Properly interpreted, the evid...