This paper uses micro-data 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...

Do variations in labor market institutions across countries affect the cross-border organization of the firm? Using firm-level data on multinationals located in France, we show that multinational firms are more likely to import intermediate inputs from external independent suppliers instead of...

We examine the location choices of the foreign affiliates of Japanese manufacturing firms, using a new data set that matches parents to the affiliates they created over the 1995-2003 period. The analysis is based on new economic geography theory, and thus focuses on the effect of market and...

In this paper we study the phenomenon of round-trip investment between Russia and key offshore financial centers (OFCs), namely, Cyprus and British Virgin Islands, which is now a significant part of foreign investment into Russia. Using firm-level data we study differences in location strategies...

Since the global crisis, China's foreign trade is no longer driven by its involvement in the global supply chains (i.e. by processing trade) but its dynamics stems from China’s own domestic demand and supply. For foreign funded enterprises, China is less and less a production base for export...

We describe the methodology used to construct a global database of foreign direct investments in three dimensions (investor country, host country and sector) for 2004. Based on Eurostat data, we estimate theoretical investments for all countries. Then we constrain our estimates subject to...

Since 2007 China has considerably reduced its external global imbalances. Its bilateral trade surpluses with the EU and the US have persisted because the rise of China’s import demand has mainly benefited its Asian neighbors and the resource rich countries. The rapid growth of China’s...

Technological and informational spillovers from multinational firms can be particularly beneficial to domestic firms especially in less developed economies. The technological superiority and management experience of foreign multinational firms yield various opportunities for learning. Yet, the...