This paper studies the extensive and intensive margins of firms' global sourcing decisions. We develop a quantifiable multi-country sourcing model in which heterogeneous firms self-select into importing based on their productivity and country-specific variables. The model delivers a simple...

Recent work documents declining business dynamism in the United States, with concerning implications for markups, innovation and productivity. Using import data for 146 countries over three decades we document a set of new stylized facts describing market dynamism world-wide. Market entry rates...

This paper examines the determinants of intra-firm trade in U.S. imports using detailed country-product data. We create a new measure of product contractibility based on the degree of intermediation in international trade for the product. We find important roles for the interaction of country...

This paper examines the determinants of intra-firm trade in U.S. imports using detailed country-product data. We create a new measure of product contractibility based on the degree of intermediation in international trade for the product. We find important roles for the interaction of country...

Contractual frictions are widely known to shape firm boundaries. But do better contracting institutions, which reduce these frictions, induce firms to be more or less deeply integrated? This paper provides a large-scale investigation of this question using a unique micro dataset of ownership...

Participation in global value chains (GVCs) can be a pathway for economic development. It is associated with growing productivity, exporting more sophisticated products and a less concentrated export basket (Kowalski et al., 2015). However, it is often argued that these benefits accrue mainly to...

This paper examines changes in the drivers of productivity in Germany over the period 1997–2012. We start by comparing the performance of German firms and inward investors before and during the recovery from the recent global financial crisis of 2008 across a range of sectors, and subsequently...

World trade and production are increasingly structured around “global value chains” (GVCs). The last few years have witnessed a growing number of case studies describing at the product level how production is internationally fragmented, but there is little evidence at the aggregate level on...

In order to better understand the interdependencies between trade and investment in global value chains (GVCs), the OECD has developed a new dataset on the Activities of Multinational Enterprises (AMNE). This dataset starts from official AMNE statistics and combines the information with...

Using the OECD analytical AMNE database, this paper provides new evidence on the services activities of multinational enterprises (MNEs) and discusses the relationship between cross-border trade in services and the production of services through foreign affiliates (“mode 3” trade in services...