This volume was prepared by Sebastian Benz while he was working at the Ifo Institute. It was completed in December 2013 and accepted as a doctoral thesis by the Department of Economics at the University of Munich. It includes five self-contained chapters. All chapters discuss different...

This volume was prepared by Benedikt Heid while he was working at the ifo Institute and the University of Bayreuth. It was completed in December 2013 and accepted as a doctoral thesis by the Department of Economics at the Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München. It includes six self-contained...

There is an ongoing debate in the literature about the quality content of Chinese exports and to what extent China imposes a threat to the market positions of advanced economies. While China's export structure is very similar to that of the advanced world, its export unit values are well below...

Despite the fact that many modern preferential trade agreements include commitments to foreign investors in imperfectly competitive services sectors, the literature has not established conditions under which these agreements are beneficial or harmful. The authors fill that void by developing a...

The paper explores theoretically and empirically why trade intermediaries (TIs) are frequently used as agents for exports to some countries but not to others. We adapt a standard intra-industry trade model with variable export costs (e.g. transport) and fixed export costs (e.g. market access) to...

Do multinational firms wield more market power than their domestic counterparts? Using Hungarian firm-level data between 1993 and 2007, we find that markups are 19 percent higher for foreign-owned firms than for domestically owned firms. Moreover, markups for domestically owned firms are...

Using the theoretical framework of global sourcing with firm heterogeneity, we examine determinants of inputs sourcing choices of manufacturing firms established in the EU countries. To this purpose, we combine information on the ownership structure and company accounts from the Orbis data set...

We derive exact conditions relating the distributions of firm productivity, sales, output, and markups to the form of demand in monopolistic competition. Applications include a new “CREMR” demand function (Constant Revenue Elasticity of Marginal Revenue): it is necessary and sufficient for...

I show in this paper that incomplete contracts affect a firm's decision about serving foreign customers through exports or local sales from an affiliated plant. When contracts between two agents within a firm are too costly to write, the share of multinational firms may be higher or lower...

We analyze tax competition between two countries of unequal size trying to attract a foreign-owned monopolist. When regional governments have only a lump-sum profit tax (subsidy) at their disposal, but face exogenous and identical transport costs for imports, then both countries will always...