Recent literature on multinational firms has stressed the importance of low productivity as a barrier to the cross-border expansion of firms. But firms may also need external finance to shoulder the costs of entering foreign markets. We develop a model of multinational firms facing real and...

Exporters and multinationals are larger and more productive than their domestic counterparts. In addition to productivity, financial constraints and labor market constraints might constitute barriers to entry into foreign markets. We present new empirical evidence on the extensive and intensive...

We analyze whether firms that establish their first affiliate in a foreign country have a different pattern of growth in output, employment, capital and productivity than firms that remain national. We use firm-level data on German multinational activities and appropriate matching techniques to...

Gravity equations explaining foreign affiliates' sales are ad hoc and hence, estimated coeffcients are hard to interpret. We therefore provide the theoretical underpinnings of the gravity equation applied to the analysis of sales of foreign affiliates of multinational firms. We argue that the...

The business literature has long recognized the importance of multinationals’ distribution networks. The empirical analysis of distribution-oriented FDI has, however, received little attention which is at least partly due to the lack of appropriate data. We outline a slightly modified version...

We provide firm-level evidence concerning four key facts of services trade in Germany. First, not only firms classified as service firms, but also firms from all industries export and import services. Second, service trade patterns are fairly similar to those in goods trade. Most notably,...

In this paper we present latest facts about the R&D activities of German multinational companies abroad and R&D activities of foreign companies in Germany. These results confirm that Germany is still an attractive location for R&D activites of multinational companies in many technological...