This paper analyses how international outsourcing affects plant productivity. The results point to a striking pattern: the status of being an outsourcer matters strongly for firms that are indigenous and not exporting, while for exporters and foreign affiliates, tfp increases are lower,...

This paper questions whether the overseas expansion of a country’s retailers fosters overall bilateral exports towards these host markets. To address this question, we consider an empirical trade model, where the foreign sales of multinational retailers reduce the fixed and variable trade...

This paper provides new estimates of international trade in services for mode 3 (foreign affiliates’sales in a host country) for four major OECD countries, thanks to the harmonisation of FATS statistics with conventional international trade ones (trade recorded in the balances of payments –...

We investigate how the export performance of firms in China is influenced by credit constraints. Using panel data from Chinese customs for 1997-2007, we show that credit constraints restrict international trade flows and affect the sectoral composition of firms’ activity. We confirm that...

Based on matching techniques in combination with a difference-in-difference estimator, this paper estimates the effects at home of initiating production abroad through the establishment of a foreign production affiliate. The analysis covers manufacturing and service firms active in France during...

In the present paper, we investigate whether previous findings of limited effects of investing abroad on the firm’s performance can be explained by the aggregation of heterogeneous effects depending on the FDI motives, sectors and locations. Results suggest, in line with previous work, that on...

This paper analyzes the transfer pricing of multinational firms. We propose a simple framework in which intra-firm prices may systematically deviate from arm's length prices for two motives: i) pricing to market, and ii) tax avoidance. Multinational firms may decide not to avoid taxes if the...

Since the global crisis, China's foreign trade is no longer driven by its involvement in the global supply chains (i.e. by processing trade) but its dynamics stems from China’s own domestic demand and supply. For foreign funded enterprises, China is less and less a production base for export...