We study the resource allocation decisions of U.S. multinational corporations (MNCs). We examine how established MNCs grow across countries and how firm-specific resources and host country financial-market development influence MNC growth. We find evidence of intra-firm trade-offs to growth in...

We present evidence about the role of rent sharing in fostering the interdependence of labour markets around the world. Our results draw on a firm-level panel of more than 2,000 multinationals and more than 5,000 of their affiliates, covering 47 home and host countries. We find considerable...

The U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA) estimates the return on investments of foreign subsidiaries of U.S. multinational companies over the period 1982--2006 averaged 9.4 percent annually after taxes; U.S. subsidiaries of foreign multinationals averaged only 3.2 percent. Two factors distort...

We investigate how multinational firms contribute to the transmission of shocks across countries using a large multi-country firm-level dataset that contains cross-border ownership information. We use these data to document two novel empirical patterns. First, foreign affiliate and headquarter...

We use a unique firm-level panel data set of multinational parents and their foreign affiliates to analyze whether profits are shared across borders within multinational firms. Using both fixed-effects and generalized method-of-moments estimators, affiliate wage levels are estimated to respond...

Most international commerce is carried out by multinational firms, which use their foreign affiliates both to serve the market of the host country and to export to other markets outside the host country. In this paper, I examine the determinants of multinational firms' location and production...

The aim of this paper is to evaluate the causal effect of foreign acquisition on R&D intensity in targeted domestic firms. We are able to distinguish domestic multinationals and nonmultinationals, which allows us to investigate the fear that the change in ownership of domestic to foreign...

We develop a theory of a firm in an environment with incomplete contracts. The firm's headquarter decides on the complexity, the organization, and the global scale of its production process. Specifically, it decides: i) on the mass of symmetric intermediate inputs that are part of the value...

What determines the boundary of multinational firms? According to Williamson (1975), a potential rationale for vertical integration is to facilitate adaptation in a world where uncertainty is resolved over time. This paper offers the first empirical analysis of the impact of adaptation on the...

Using firm-level data, we document two new facts regarding intrafirm trade and the activities of the foreign affiliates of U.S. multinational corporations. First, intrafirm trade is concentrated among a small number of large affiliates within large multinational corporations; the median...