This paper highlights the crucial role played by international access to intermediate inputs to explain firm-level performance, via two channels simultaneously: trade and FDI. We develop a simple theoretical model showing that trade integration of input market entails an efficiency improvement...

We show that the static duopoly model in which firms choose between exporting and foreign direct investment is often a prisoners' dilemma game in which a switch from exporting to foreign direct investment reduces profits. By contrast, we show that when the game is repeated there is a range of...

According to conventional wisdom, multinational firms undertake vertical FDI in order to take advantage of cross-border factor cost differences and source the inputs from abroad at better terms. Recent empirical findings though document that this is not always the case. We provide theoretical...