Firms cluster their economic activities to exploit technological and informational spillovers from other firms. Spillovers through the entry of multinational firms can be particularly beneficial to domestic firms because of their technological superiority. Yet, the importance of foreign firm's...

This paper uses microdata on balance sheets, trade, and the nationality of ownership of firms in France to investigate the effect of foreign multinationals on business cycle comovement. We first show that foreign affiliates, which represent a tiny fraction of all firms, are responsible for a...