We argue that the measures of backward linkages used in recent papers on spillovers from multinational companies are potentially problematic, as they depend on a number of restrictive assumptions, namely that (i) multinationals use domestically produced inputs in the same proportion as imported...

According to the ‘convergence hypothesis’, multinational companies will tend to displace national firms and trade as total market size increases and as countries converge in relative size, factor endowments, and production costs. Using a recent model developed by Markusen and Venables (1998)...

While foreign-owned firms have consistently been found to pay higher wages than domestic firms to what appear to be equally productive workers, the causes of this remain unresolved. In a two-period bargaining framework we show that if training is more productive and specific in foreign firms,...

This Paper examines whether multinational companies are more ‘footloose’ than their domestic counterparts in the host country, using data for the Irish manufacturing sector. First, we investigate whether plant survival rates differ between multinationals and indigenous plants. Second, we...

This paper investigates whether government support can act to increase exporting activity. We use a uniquely rich data set on Irish manufacturing plants and employ an empirical strategy that combines a non-parametric matching procedure with a difference-in-differences estimator in order to deal...

We investigate the impact of international outsourcing on productivity using plant level data for Irish manufacturing. Specifically, we distinguish the effect of outsourcing of materials from services inputs. Moreover, we examine whether the impact on productivity is different for plants being...

Many previous studies have shown that the localisation of firms can be an important factor in attracting new foreign direct investment into a host country. What has been missing in this literature thus far, however, is an investigation into the reasons why industry clusters attract firms. We...

Foreign-owned firms have consistently been found to pay higher wages than domestic firms to what appear to be equally productive workers in both developed and developing countries alike. Although a number of studies have documented and some attempted to explain this stylized fact, the issue...

This paper examines whether financial assistance provided by government induces firms to spend more of their own funds on training expenditures, using plant level data for the Republic of Ireland. We pay particular attention to the potential problems in such an evaluation study, namely...