It is often argued that multinationals are reluctant to transfer technology due to the fear of spillovers. We show that this need not be the case if host country policies like taxation are taken into account. Furthermore, we examine the incentives the multinational and the host country have to engage in an international joint venture. We show why a multinational may agree to enter a joint ventu...

The present paper analyses the challenge to redistribution programs posed by an increase in skill premium. The increase in skill premium, which we observe in most OECD countries, affects taxation through its effect on education and migration incentives. We demonstrate that in countries with a relatively egalitarian wage distribution, the response to an increased gap in wages is likely to be inc...

In the last decade we have seen a significant change in the composition of capital flows to developed as well as to developing countries. In this paper we investigate empirically the links between the volatility of monetary macroeconomic aggregates, as a measure of country specific measure of relative risk, and the structure of external liabilities in developed and developing countries. We esti...

Previous work on the effect of taxes on foreign direct investment (FDI) focused primarily on capital income taxes. We investigate the proposition that other forms of taxation may also deter FDI. We use tax ratios, i.e., average effective tax rates, on consumption, labor and capital income for a panel of 25 OECD countries from 1975-2006. We find that increases in relative tax rates on capital in...

The impact of environmental stringency on capital flows remains a hotly contested issue. Moreover, existing parametric estimates using counts of new foreign-owned manufacturing plant births provide counter-intuitive results: pollution abatement costs are only found to have an impact in non-pollution-intensive sectors. Applying recently developed nonparametric count data methods, we re-visit thi...

Banking sector openness may directly increase growth by improving the quality of financial services and increasing funds available, or indirectly by improving the efficiency of financial intermediaries, both of which may reduce the cost of financing, in turn, increase capital accumulation and economic growth. The objective of the paper is to empirically reinvestigate these direct and indirect l...

This paper studies the entry decision of a multinational enterprise into a foreign market. Two alternative entry modes for a foreign direct investment are considered: Greenfield investment versus acquisition. In contrast to existing approaches, the acquisition price and the profits under both entry modes are endogenously determined. Interestingly, we find that the optimal entry mode decision is...

We introduce habit formation in a model that studies the link between international trade in financial assets, economic growth, and welfare. As with time separable preferences asset trade increases the mean growth rate, but it also increases growth-volatility. We demonstrate that the welfare gain from asset trade is lower with habit persistence in consumption. This reflects that the habit-formi...