This paper studies international joint ventures, where foreign direct investment is performed by a foreign and a domestic firm that together set up a new firm, the joint venture. Employing administrative data on all international joint ventures in China from 1998 to 2007—roughly a quarter of...

This paper shows that in the presence of labor market shocks, child-bearing and child-rearing have far-reaching implications for gender inequality, household specialization and family structure. Using population register data on all births, marriages, and divorces together with employer-employee...

In what sense are institutions a deep determinant of growth? In this paper, we address this question by examining the relationship between city growth and institutional reform in 19th century Germany, when some cities experienced deep institutional reform as a result of French rule. Employing an...

In this paper, we provide aggregate trends in China's trade performance from the 1840s to the present. Based on historical benchmarks, we argue that China's recent gains are not exclusively due to the reforms since 1978. Rather, foreign economic activity can be understood by developments that...

This paper examines the effect of Wal-Mart's entry into Mexico on Mexican manufacturers of consumer goods. Guided by firm interviews that suggested substantial heterogeneity across firms in how they responded to Wal-Mart's entry, we develop a dynamic industry model in which firms decide whether...

While it is well known that managers prefer in-person meetings for negotiating deals and selling their products, face-to-face communication may be particularly important for the transfer of technology because technology is best explained and demonstrated in person. This paper studies the role of...

As a factor influencing productivity, a country's own research and development to generate new technology is more important than that of the average foreign country. It is generally difficult to separate the effect of importing intermediate goods with embodied technology from the effect of other...

This paper presents and tests a new model of multinational firms to explain a rich array of multinational behaviour. In contrast to most approaches, here the multinational faces costs to transferring its knowhow that are increasing in technological complexity. Costly technology transfer gives...

This paper uses a case study approach to explore the effects of NAFTA and GATT membership on innovation and trade in the Mexican soaps, detergents and surfactants (SDS) industry. Several basic findings emerge. First, the most fundamental effect of NAFTA and the GATT on the SDS industry was to...