Most international commerce is carried out by multinational firms, which use their foreign affiliates for the majority of their foreign sales. In this paper, I examine the determinants of multinational firms' location and production decisions and the welfare implications of multinational...

We investigate the spatial distribution and organization of an imperfectly competitive industry when firms may choose to operate more than a single production unit. Focusing on a short-run setting with a fixed mass of firms, we fully characterize the spatial equilibria analytically. Comparing...

We examine integration strategies of multinational firms that face a rich array of choices of international organization. Each firm in an industry must provide headquarter services from its home country, produce intermediate inputs, and assemble the intermediate goods into final products. Both...

Local density (the number of firms vying for similar resources in a local environment) has been overlooked in explaining foreign subsidiary performance. This study draws upon the literatures on liability of foreignness and density dependence to examine how local density within the host country...

We investigate the heterogeneity within the group of foreign direct investors and the relation between affiliates characteristics and parent productivity. Using data on Italian firms, we show that foreign direct investors differ in their productivity level according to their characteristics and...

We draw on a recent survey of European companies to differentiate between alternative modes of international outsourcing as possible determinants of market, cost and knowledge-related aspects of the competitiveness of firms. We find that internalized modes are often superior to outside options,...

Using a large panel data set for European firms, this paper provides evidence that operations at multinational headquarters are significantly more profitable than perations at their foreign subsidiaries. The effect turns out to be robust and quantitatively large. Our findings suggest that the...

Using a large data set of European firms, this paper provides evidence that operations at multinational headquarters are significantly more profitable than operations at their foreign subsidiaries. The effect turns out to be robust and quantitatively large. Our findings suggest that the...

This paper provides empirical evidence on two potential costs of shared ownership of German affiliates abroad. First, in periods of currency crises, wholly-owned affiliates, in contrast to partially-owned affiliates, seem to circumvent financial constraints by accessing capital from their parent...