In 1988-97, the average rate of return on assets (ROA) of foreign-owned nonfinancial companies, at 5.1 percent, was 2.2 percentage points below that of U.S.-owned companies; over the period, the ROA gap narrowed to about 1 percentage point in 1997. Among several factors that may help explain the...

Despite an extensive literature on the determinants of the foreign location choices by multinational companies, researchers have only recently begun to systematically examine how these companies form their location consideration sets. When considering new foreign locations, do firms evaluate the...

BEA’s statistics on U.S. multinational companies (MNC’s) provide a comprehensive and integrated data set for empirical analysis of MNC’s. Balance of payments data measure transactions between U.S. parents and their foreign affiliates, and direct investment position data measure the...

Interest in the effects of globalized production on national economies has been heightened in recent years by the rapid growth in direct investment. Research in this area is, however, often limited by the scarcity of relevant data. Even when relevant data exist, comparison of the data across...