The prevalence of Internet-based sales was highlighted by the World Bank (Ferro, 2011) associating state-of-art technology with exporters. We use propensity score kernel matching with difference-in-differences to reveal export selection and evidence of ‘technology upgrading’ through higher...

The article summarises the main lessons of the Bank’s 2010 conference which focused on international trade and foreign direct investment. The research is based on a microeconomic approach to the behaviour of Belgian firms, with reference to developments in the scientific literature on the...

We develop a three-country heterogeneous-firm model and show that FDI liberalization in one foreign country (F1) results in the following: (i) some firms from the home country switch from export to FDI in F1; (ii) skilled labor¡¯s wage rate drops in the home country; (iii) wage inequality...

We analyze the relationship between offshoring and the onshore workforce composition in German multinational enterprises (MNEs), using plant data that allow us to discern tasks, occupations, and workforce skills. Offshoring is associated with a statistically significant shift towards more...

Banking regulations often differ between countries: Some regulators require banks to document their evaluation of firms’ creditworthiness, which determines the banks’ choice of lending technology. In a theoretical model, we study how differences in regulation influence competition between...

This paper examines the social relationships in and around a German subsidiary in Hungary during the first 15 years of Hungarian transition to a market economy. It draws on a recent conceptual framework that sees multinational corporations as transnational social spaces, in which transnational...

The structural changes that have occurred over the last decades in the highly developed countries have had direct repercussions on the ways of participating to the global labor division. The principle of labor division will be renewed. It will evolve from

Labor turnover is a commonly cited mechanism for the transmission of technology from multinational to domestic firms. Using a matched establishment-worker database from Brazil, I present evidence consistent with positive multinational wage spillovers through worker mobility. When workers leave...

The paper presents several results concerning the impact of foreign direct investments on labour productivity in different countries. The focus is on the labour productivity differences that exist between the foreign and domestic companies and on the way these differences evolve in the host...

This paper examines the effect of foreign direct investment (FDI) on employment generation for a group of Latin American countries in the period 1980-2006. Using a dynamic panel model, which is estimated with the Arellano-Bover/Blundell-Bond system estimator, I find that FDI has a positive and...