Seminal theories of the firm posit that firm ownership is allocated to minimize contractual inefficiencies. Yet, it remains unclear how much the optimal ownership choice affects firm performance in practice. This paper provides a first quantification of the gains from optimal ownership within...

Over the last decades, the internationalization of the value chain has allowed firms to exploit cross-country differences in environmental and labor regulation (and enforcement) in ways that have led to a large number of NGO campaigns and consumer boycotts criticizing "unethical" practices. How...

This paper provides the first in-depth study of the organization of knowledge in multinational firms. The paper develops a theoretical model that studies how firms optimally split knowledge between their headquarters and their production plants if communication costs impede the access of...

This paper deals with the interactions between outward investments of western multinationals and export performance of their affiliates in transition countries. It argues that multinationals make an important contribution to increasing, diversifying and up-grading trade, because they are able to...

Foreign direct investment - the major driving force of globalization - is increasingly dominated by merger and acquisition activities. Since the mid-1990s, an unprecedented wave of foreign direct investment and a corresponding wave of cross-border mergers and acquisitions can be observed. As a...

"Being international" has nearly become an undisputed aim for firms in a globalized world. Several papers find a positive relationship between foreign direct investment (FDI) and the home performance of firms. In this paper we address the "FDI - export" relationship to better understand this...

This paper analyzes the location choice determinants of French first-time investments in Europe, North America and North Africa. Firm locations are examined on two geographical scales, the national and regional level. The final sample comprises 307 location decisions in 27 countries and across...

For a sample of 1243 European companies, we analyse the link between firm type and foreign direct investment (FDI) locations. We find substantial empirical evidence that being a family firm does not only affect the overall propensity for FDI but that this effect is also specific to target...

The decision of companies to enter international markets, either via exports or foreign direct investment (FDI), has been postulated by the self-sorting model of Helpman, Melitz and Yeaple (HMY, 2004). In the strict sense, the theoretical predictions of HMY only apply to firms that become...

What determines whether or not multinational firms transplant the mode of organisation to other countries? We embed the theory of knowledge hierarchies in an industry equilibrium model of monopolistic competition to examine how the economic environment may affect the decision of multinational...