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...

It is well known that the performance of foreign firms compared to domestic companies is superior with respect to employment, wages, and productivity. In this paper we detail the export behaviour of foreign affiliates in the United Kingdom relative to indigenous firms. Our findings show that foreign firms are more likely to export, and when they do so they are more export intensive and overall ...

Global engagement of firms can take a variety of forms. We argue that there are considerable advantages of developing models that allow for a wide set of alternatives of organizational form. We illustrate this firstly using plant level data which allows us to distinguish firms that serve only the domestic market, firms that export final goods abroad, firms that outsource abroad the production o...

Are firms born Global? Because knowledge spillovers that lead to new venture creation are geographically constrained we believe that firms are born local. It follows that the decision to create sustainable new ventures is independent from the decision to internationalize, even if that is the ultimate goal of the firm. We explore two avenues to internationalize new ventures, a direct path descri...

Multinational companies can shift profit and income between branches in order to reduce the overall tax liabilities of the company. The result is a tax competition between countries. In this paper we consider the sequential choice of tax rates to illustrate the potential effects of tax leadership. We use a profit shifting model with multinational firms that operate in two countries, large and s...

This paper examines one of the basic tenets of UK industrial policy, that attracting inward investment into the UK stimulates domestic productivity growth. A model of productivity growth is developed for the indigenous sector of UK manufacturing, linking domestic productivity growth to theoretical explanations of inward investment. The paper demonstrates that inward investment does stimulate pr...

In this paper we investigate the relationship between economic growth and industrial pollution emissions in China using data for 112 major cities between 2001 and 2004. Using disaggregated data we separate FDI inflows from Hong Kong, Macao and Taiwan from those of other foreign economies. We examine four industrial water pollution indicators (wastewater, chemical oxygen demand, hexavalent chrom...