This paper provides the first in-depth study of the organization of knowledge in multinational firms. The paper develops a theoretical model that studies how firms optimally split knowledge between their headquarters and their production plants if communication costs impede the access of...

The diffusion of knowledge in the world generates positive externalities if knowledge flows increase the productivity of R&D. Our work analyzes knowledge diffusion and knowledge externalities in generating innovation and in determining productivity. We first estimate the determinants of...

Economic societies emerged during the late eighteenth-century. We argue that these institutions reduced the costs of accessing useful knowledge by adopting, producing, and diffusing new ideas. Combining location information for the universe of 3,300 members across active economic societies in...

Does access to information and communication technologies (ICT) increase innovation? We examine this question by exploiting the staggered adoption of BITNET across U.S. universities in the 1980s. BITNET, an early version of the Internet, enabled e-mail-based knowledge exchange and collaboration...

In this paper we replicate most of the stylized facts characterizing the decline in business dynamism in the USA highlighted by Akcigit and Ates (2021) and provide an explanation of their emergence by means of a macroeconomic agent-based model populated by two types of firms: innovators who...

The literature has documented a positive effect of foreign ownership on firm performance. But is this effect due to a one-time knowledge transfer or does it rely on continuous injections of knowledge? To shed light on this question we focus on divestments, that is, foreign affiliates that are...

In contrast to empirical evidence, recent theories of cross-border mergers and acquisitions (M&As) assume perfect knowledge transfers - from high to low productivity firms - between acquirer and target. Using the Melitz (2003) model of heterogeneous firms, we develop a matching model of...

Using a unique dataset on worldwide multinational corporations with precise location of headquarters and affiliates, I present evidence of a trade-off between distance to the headquarters and the knowledge intensity of the foreign subsidiary's economic activity, emerging from dynamics related to...

What determines whether or not multinational firms transplant the mode of organisation to other countries? We embed the theory of knowledge hierarchies in an industry equilibrium model of monopolistic competition to examine how the economic environment may affect the decision of multinational...

This paper replicates Poole (2013) using comprehensive Norwegian and Irish register data. Our results largely confirm the evidence documented in Poole for Brazil which suggests that when workers leave multinationals and are rehired at domestic establishments, the wages of their new coworkers who...