The structure of a multinational firm, that is how its affiliates relate to one another, is critical for understanding where multinationals locate, how policy affects them, and their resilience to localized shocks. Here, we review the two main structures: horizontal investments which replicate...

Models dealing with cross-border acquisitions versus greenfield investment usually assume that the entry of a foreign firm into a market has effects on the outputs of all domestic firms in that market, but exit or entry of local firms is not considered. The purpose of this paper is to re-examine...

There exist two approaches in the literature concerning the multinational firm's mode choice for foreign production between an owned subsidiary and a licensing contract. One approach considers environments where the firm is transferring primarily knowledge-based assets. An important assumption...

Beginning in the early 1980s, theoretical analyses have incorporated the multinational firm into the microeconomic, general-equilibrium theory of international trade. Recent advances indicate how vertical and horizontal multinationals arise endogenously as determined by country characteristics,...

The institution and enforcement of property rights and contracts have been an important policy issue for the developing countries, the transition economies, and the developed countries in the 1990s. This has led to the development of a literature on technology transfer and how property rights...

The literature on multinationals and developing countries has examined the causality" running from direct investment to changes in country characteristics (wages skills, etc.) and also the opposite direction of causality, from existing country characteristics to" inward direct investment. This...

This paper contributes to research endogenizing multinational firms in general-equilibrium trade models. We attempt to integrate separate contributions on horizontal multinationals which produce the same final product in multiple locations, with work on vertical multinationals, which...

We consider the multinational firm's decision on whether to enter a new market immediately via direct investment or to contract initially with a local agent and (possibly) invest later. Use of a local agent allows the multinational to avoid costly mistakes by finding out if the market is large...