Multinational enterprises (MNEs) develop their networks of foreign affiliates gradually over time. Instead of exploring all profitable opportunities immediately, they first establish themselves in their home countries and then enter new markets stepwise. We argue that this behavior is driven by...

This paper formulates a structural empirical model of heterogeneous firms whose workers exhibit fair-wage preferences. In the underlying theoretical framework, such preferences lead to a link between a firm's operating profits on the one hand and wages of workers employed by this firm on the...

This paper sheds light on the role of the impact of taxes on energy production versus tariffs on imported goods for trade, energy demand, and welfare. For this, we develop a structural Eaton-Kortum type general equilibrium model of international trade which includes an energy sector. We estimate...

This paper provides evidence of heterogeneous treatment effects on trade from switching among three types of de-facto exchange rate regimes: freely floating, currency bands, and pegs or currency unions. A cottage literature at the interface of macroeconomics and international economics focuses...

Transfers to individuals, firms, and regions are often regulated by threshold rules, giving rise to a regression discontinuity design. An example are transfers provided by the European Commission to regions of EU member states below a certain income level. Researchers have focused on estimation...

We formulate a two-country model with monopolistic competition and heterogeneous firms to reconsider labor market linkages in open economies. Labor-market imperfections arise by virtue of country-specific real minimum wages. Two principal experiments are considered. First, we show that trade...

This paper develops a structural empirical general equilibrium model of aggregate bilateral trade with path dependence of country-pair level exporter status. Such path dependence is motivated through informational costs about serving a foreign market for first-time entry of (firms in) an export...

Controlled foreign company (CFC) rules are frequently imposed by countries as part of their anti-tax-avoidance legislation. This paper aims at quantifying their impact on foreign investments by utilizing a regression discontinuity design and the universe of German foreign investments notified to...

This paper proposes a model where heterogeneous firms choose whether to undertake R&D or not. Innovative firms are more productive, have larger investment opportunities and lower own funds for necessary tangible continuation investments than non-innovating firms. As a result, they are...

The European Union (EU) provides grants to disadvantaged regions of member states from two pools, the Structural Funds and the Cohesion Fund. The main goal of the associated transfers is to facilitate convergence of poor regions (in terms of per-capita income) to the EU average. We use data at...