We study patterns of FDI in a multi-country world economy. First, we present evidence for a broad sample of countries that firms direct FDI disproportionately to markets with income levels similar to their home market. Then we develop a model featuring non-homothetic preferences for quality and...

In this paper, we focus on the skill formation when considering the trade impacts on labor markets. Although workers are identical as unskilled labor, they differ in their productivity as skilled. Workers become skilled by incurring the training costs. Introducing the above settings into a trade...

In this paper, I show that in a theoretical environment where monopolistic competitive firms choose between exporting and servicing through a multinational with foreign direct investment (FDI), a gravity representation of exports and FDI can be derived. I then discuss the extent to which the...

Industry level data shows striking differences among sectors in ratios of exports to FDI sales. We identify the elements behind the sectoral differences in the mode of foreign market servicing in the context of a general equilibrium model of monopolistic competition. Our calibration exercise...

Multinational enterprises (MNEs) are increasingly dealing with challenges shaped by the new geopolitical and trade environments. Besides traditional tariffs, exporting firms need to comply with regulatory non-tariff measures (NTMs) in the form of technical barriers to trade (TBTs) and sanitary...

Multinational enterprises (MNEs) are increasingly dealing with challenges shaped by the new geopolitical and trade environments. Besides traditional tariffs, exporting firms need to comply with regulatory non-tariff measures (NTMs) in the form of technical barriers to trade (TBTs) and sanitary...

The paper identifies competitive advantages and disadvantages of East African Community (EAC) as FDI location, observing EAC as a region, in spite of visible differences among the member countries. Despite the EAC’s progress towards the development of a common market still existing...

China was a major player in the rise of global imbalances in the mid-2000s. If its overall trade surplus has decreased since 2007, its bilateral surpluses with the U.S. and Europe remain quite large. China’s import demand has mainly benefited to its Asian neighbors and to raw material...

In this paper, unlike the conventional wisdom, we demonstrate that the relationship between the size of the market and number of firms would be non-monotonic. While moderate rise in the size would force the local firms to exit and only the foreign firm rules, substantial rise in the size would...

The effects of ISO 9000 diffusion on trade and FDI have gone understudied. We employ panel data reported by OECD nations over the 1995-2002 period to estimate the impact of ISO adoptions on country-pair economic relations. We find ISO diffusion to have no effect in developed nations, but to...