Forward-looking investments determine the resilience of firms' supply chains. Such investments confer externalities on other firms in the production network. We compare the equilibrium and optimal allocations in a general equilibrium model with an arbitrary number of vertical production tiers....

We examine integration strategies of multinational firms that face a rich array of choices of international organization. Each firm in an industry must provide headquarter services from its home country, produce intermediate inputs, and assemble the intermediate goods into final products. Both...

We study the determinants of the extent of outsourcing and of direct foreign investment in an industry in which producers need specialized components. Potential suppliers must make a relationship-specific investment in order to serve each prospective customer. Such investments are governed by...

We develop a model of large multinational enterprises, each one producing a continuum of products. These outsized firms compete as oligopolists in a domestic and foreign market, facing competitive pressure from single-product firms that engage in monopolistic competition. The multinational...

This Economica Coase Lecture reviews research that has revolutionized the field of international trade and foreign direct investment. It explains the motivation behind the development of new analytical frameworks, the nature of these frameworks, and the empirical studies that sprouted from them

Empirical studies have found that enhanced foreign competition can encourage or discourage innovation. To address this relationship, I examine a market structure in which a small number of large multi-product oligopolists compete with a large number of small single-product firms in the same...

During the last two decades, new research has greatly advanced our understanding of the structure of world trade. This article reviews the empirical literature that grew out of this effort, emphasizing the ways in which it relied on theoretical developments

In this paper we study how aggregate output responds to the arrival of a new General Purpose Technology (GPT) by looking at adjustment mechanisms that operate through labor markets. We show that under a wide set of circumstances the arrival of a new GPT that raises long-run output can trigger a...

We study the politics of intergenerational redistribution in an overlapping generations model with short-lived governments. The successive governmentsþwho care about the welfare of the currently living generations and possibly about campaign contributionsþare unable to pre-commit the future...