This paper examines the relationship between foreign ownership and productivity, paying particular attention to two issues neglected in the existing literature – the role of multinationals in service sectors and the importance of R&D activity conducted by foreign multinationals. We review existing theoretical and empirical work, which largely focuses on manufacturing, before presenting new evid...

The internationalisation of R&D of multinational firms is an important ingredient in the ongoing trend towards globalisation. Previous research on Finnish multinationals has mainly relied on R&D expenditure data. In this paper we provide new insights into how the internationalisation of R&D of these Finnish multinationals is also reflected in their innovative output as measured by patenting. Th...

Indian capital controls impede foreign borrowing by corporations, and particularly short-term debt. In recent years, many Indian companies have become multinationals, which makes it possible for them to obtain short-term debt finance into offshore entities. This paper tests the extent to which Indian MNCs have greater exposure to global credit market conditions. The exposure of each firm to the...

This paper examines the effect of the presence of multinational companies on plant survival in the host country. We postulate that multinational companies can impact positively on plant survival through technology spillovers. We study the nature of the effect of multinationals using a Cox proportional hazard model which we estimate using plant level data for Irish manufacturing industries. Our ...

The paper acknowledges the emergence of the emerging country multinationals (ECMs) and their entry into the global economy. Much research has been done from the point of view of developed country multinationals, while the perspective of ECMs has been ignored. We discuss the entry of emerging country multinationals into developed markets from a cultural point of view. The cultural adaptation tha...

Multinationals as Stabilizers? Economic Crisis and Plant Employment Growth This paper examines the link between multinational enterprises and employment growth at the plant-level. We investigate in detail the comparative response of multinationals and domestic firms to an economic crisis, using the empirical setting of a well defined case of economic slowdown in Chile as a natural experiment. I...

The Multinational Corporation bestrode the 19 th , 20 th and early 21 st centuries like the Colossus of Rhodes. Through their efficiency in organizing and effectiveness in achieving goals, multinationals have shaped the world in which we live perhaps even to a greater extent than governments and the people they purport to represent. Yet just as the Rhodes colossus was toppled from below, the ri...

We examine the economic justification for providing investment subsidies to foreign-owned multinationals. These provide employment opportunities and generate demand for domestic intermediate inputs, produced by domestic workers with increasing returns to scale. Offering subsidies to multinationals may be in the national interest if the investment raises the net value of domestic production. Whe...

This paper examines the link between multinational enterprises and plant exit in Chile. We investigate three main questions: are affiliates of foreign multinationals more likely to exit than domestic firms? Does the exit probability of multinationals depend on its export orientation?, and Does the presence of multinationals affect the survival of other firms in the economy? Our results show tha...

This paper examines the comparative response of multinationals and domestic firms to an economic crisis, using the empirical setting of a well defined case of economic slowdown in Chile. We find that employment in manufacturing plants has been drastically reduced during the economic crisis. Our findings reveal that multinationals are more likely to exit contributing to ...