Empirical evidence strongly suggests that R&D increases a firm’s absorptive capacity (its ability to absorb spillovers from other firms) as well as contributing directly to profitability. We explore the theoretical implications of this. We specify a general model of the absorptive capacity...

This paper examines how time to build alters strategic investment behaviour under oligopoly. Facing demand uncertainty, firms decide whether to invest early or wait until uncertainty has been resolved. A game that captures time-to-build investment is contrasted with another one in which...

This paper presents a model of the interaction between two rival firms based in the same country. Each firm must decide how to serve a foreign market (export or foreign production) and how much to invest in a corporate-wide asset that reduces production costs and/or augments the...

We introduce the concept of cooperative substitutes and complements, and use it to throw light on the conditions for a research joint venture to choose equal levels of R&D by all member firms. We show that the second-order conditions for a symmetric optimum take a particularly simple form,...

We study the effect of the intellectual property rights (IPR) regime of a host country (South) on a multinational's decision between serving a market via greenfield foreign direct investment to avoid the exposure of its technology or entering a joint venture (JV) with a local firm, which allows...

We compare trade liberalization under Cournot and Bertrand competition in reciprocal markets. In both cases, the critical level of trade costs below which the possibility of trade affects the domestic firm’s behavior is the same; trade liberalization increases trade volume monotonically; and...

This paper studies the effect of the firm-size distribution on the relationship between employment and output. We construct a theoretical model, which predicts that changes in demand for industry output have larger effects on employment in industries characterised by a distribution that is more...

This paper studies the effect of the firm-size distribution on the relationship between employment and output. We construct a theoretical model, which predicts that changes in demand for industry output have larger effects on employment in industries characterised by a distribution that is more...

This paper examines how employment protection legislation affects location decisions of multinationals. Based on a simple theoretical framework, we estimate an empirical model, using OECD-data on bilateral FDI-flows and employment protection indices. We find that, while an ?unfavourable?...