Many developing countries would like to increase the share of modern or formal sectors in their employment. One way to accomplish this goal may be to encourage the entrance of foreign firms. They are typically relatively large, with high productivity and good access to foreign markets, and might...

We analyze how China's emergence as a destination for foreign direct investment is affecting the ability of other countries to attract FDI. We do so using an approach that accounts for the endogeneity of China's FDI. The impact turns out to vary by region. China's rapid growth and attractions as...

We compare the relation between foreign affiliate production and parent employment in U.S. manufacturing multinationals with that in Swedish firms. U.S. multinationals appear to have allocated some of their more labor intensive operations selling in world markets to affiliates in developing...

Direct investment has accounted for about a quarter of total international capital outflows in the 1990s and appears to have grown, relative to other forms of international investment, since the 1970s. The United States was by far the major source of direct investment outflows in the early...

This report, prepared for the Committee on Economic Statistics of the American Economic Association, examines the state of available data for the study of international trade and foreign direct investment. Data on values of imports and exports of goods are of high quality and coverage, but price...

As production comes to depend more on intangible productive assets, the location of production by multinational firms becomes increasingly ambiguous. The reason is that, within the firm, these assets have no clear geographical location, but only a nominal location determined by the firm's tax or...

Fears that production abroad would cause home country exports and employment to fall have not been confirmed by evidence. Multinational operations have led to a shift by parent firms in the United States toward more capital- intensive and skill- intensive domestic production. However, that type...

The concept and measurement of foreign direct investment have changed over time, and what is measured by balance of payments flows and stocks is quite different from what is implied by theories of direct investment. The industrial distribution of stocks of FDI, the most widely available measure,...

In each of three financial and exchange rate crises, Latin America in 1982, Mexico in 1994, and East Asia in 1997, direct investment inflows into the affected countries have behaved differently from other forms of investment, and U.S. manufacturing affiliates have behaved differently from other...

Internationalized production, that is, production by multinational firms outside their home countries has increased over the last two decades, but it was still, in 1990, only about 7 percent of world output. The share was higher, at 15 percent in 'industry,' including manufacturing, trade,...