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...

This paper compares the performance of purely domestic plants, domestic exporters and domestic multinationals. For our empirical analysis we utilise a non-parametric approach based on the principle of first order stochastic dominance. We find that the distributions for multinationals dominate...

We present a heterogeneous-firm model in which management ability increases both pro- duction efficiency and product quality. Combining six micro-datasets on management prac- tices, production and trade in Chinese and American firms, we find broad support for the model's predictions. First,...