We argue that the measures of backward linkages used in recent papers on spillovers from multinational companies are potentially problematic, as they depend on a number of restrictive assumptions, namely that (i) multinationals use domestically produced inputs in the same proportion as imported...

Using information on more than 1000 firms in a number of emerging countries, we find quantitative evidence that suppliers of multinationals that are pressured by their customers to reduce production costs or develop new products have higher productivity growth than other firms, including other...

We use unique plant-level data to study the link between the local availability of services and the decision of manufacturing firms to source materials from abroad. To guide our empirical analysis we develop a monopolistic-competition model of the materials sourcing decisions of heterogeneous...

This paper explores how value-chain governance affects the innovation performance of suppliers of intermediate products. We take advantage of a unique dataset of Italian firms to identify governance regimes along suppliers’ technological capabilities and the level of explicit coordination in...

Globalization brings opportunities and pressures for domestic firms in emerging market economies to innovate and improve their competitive position. Using recent data on firms in 27 transition economies, we test for the effects of globalization through the impact of increased competition and...

We use firm-level data and national input-output tables from 17 countries over the 2002-2005 period to test new and existing hypotheses about the impact of foreign direct investment (FDI) on the efficiency of domestic firms in the host country (i.e., spillovers). Providing evidence from a larger...

We use rich firm-level data and national input-output tables from 17 countries over the 2002-2005 period to test new and existing hypotheses about the impact of foreign direct investment (FDI) on the efficiency of domestic firms in the host country (i.e., spillovers). We document that backward...

While there has been a large empirical literature on productivity spillovers from foreign to domestic firms this literature treats the channels through which these spillover effects work as a black box. This paper attempts to fill this gap in the literature. Our results suggest that firms which...

This paper is a practical guide for researchers and practitioners who want to understand spillover effects in program evaluation. The paper defines spillover effects and discusses why it is important to measure them. It explains how to design a field experiment to measure the average effects of...

We study the impact of grandparental retirement decisions on family members' labor supply and child outcomes by exploiting a Dutch pension reform in a fuzzy Regression Discontinuity design. A one-hour increase in grandmothers' hours worked causes adult daughters with young children to work half...