We use data on Chinese manufacturing firms to study the connection between individual firm imports and firm export outcomes. Since our panel covers the years 2002 to 2006, we can use changes in import tariffs associated with China's WTO entry as instruments. Our regression results show that...

Each of the world's largest retailers---Walmart, Carrefour, Tesco, and Metro---entered China after 1995. Their subsequent expansion in China may have influenced Chinese exports through two channels. First, they may have enhanced bilateral exports between the retailers' Chinese operations and...

This paper studies U.S. overseas assembly imports to identify whether factors related to information or search costs appear to condition outsourcing decisions. The data for 1991-2000 show that U.S. overseas assembly imports were characterized by incomplete pass-through of production and trade...

Recent theories of economic geography suggest that firms in the same industry may be drawn to the same locations because proximity generates positive externalities or 'agglomeration effects.' Under this view, chance events and government inducements can have a lasting influence on the...

This paper studies the relationship between multinational firm proximity and the formation of new export connections by private Chinese exporters between 1997 and 2003. The results indicate that growth in the presence of multinational firms is positively associated with the formation of new...

We study Japanese investments between 1980 and 1992 to assess the effectiveness of state promotion efforts in light of strong agglomeration economies in Japanese investment. Two policy variables are consistently shown to influence the location of investment - foreign trade zones and labor...

This paper studies the cross-country pattern of U.S. overseas assembly activities between 1980 and 2000 to examine how outsourcing decisions are affected by changes in country and competitor costs. A number of interesting regularities emerge. When a country's costs rise, the share of U.S....

This paper examines how changes in China's trade environment contributed to the rise in private firm exports. Data from 1997 to 2009 reveal that both increased exposure to multinational firm exports in related industries and expansion in private firm imports at the broad industry level...

This paper analyzes the economic effects of content-based import tariffs China imposed on imported auto parts. While China’s policy penalized any firm that assembled cars with less than 60 percent Chinese content, the policy was most likely to affect foreign affiliated firms who were more...

The manipulation of transfer prices changes the relative tax burdens multinational firms face in their different countries of operation. Transfer price manipulation also triggers changes in the tariffs that are levied on intra-company imports. For this reason, when tax rates change, as they did...