Costa Rica has some concerns for the "middle income trap" stemming from her perceived weakening export competitiveness, intensifying competition in attracting FDI inflow; and apparent lack of innovation capabilities. Quantitative analyses on the impact of recent FTAs suggest only large firms...

During the past decade of declining FDI barriers, small domestic firms disproportionately contracted while large multinational firms experienced a substantial growth in Japan’s manufacturing sector. This paper quantitatively assesses the impact of FDI globalization on intra-industry...

This paper develops a micro-simulation framework for multinational entry and sales activities across countries. The model is based on Eaton, Kortum, and Kramarz's (2010) quantitative trade model adapted towards multinational production. Using micro data on Japanese manufacturing firms, we first...

The growing importance of innovation in economic growth has encouraged the development of innovation capabilities in East Asia, within which China, Japan, and Korea are most important in terms of technological capabilities. Using Japanese patent data, we examine how knowledge networks have...

The growing importance of innovation in economic growth has encouraged the development of innovation capabilities in East Asia, within which China, Japan, and Korea are most important in terms of technological capabilities. Using U.S. patent data, we examine how knowledge networks have developed...

This paper investigates theoretically and empirically firms' productivity ranking among traditional horizontal foreign direct investment (HFDI), pure platform FDI (PFDI), and complex platform FDI (CFDI). Using data on Japanese outward FDI, we define firms conducting HFDI or PFDI as those...

We examine transport modal decision by multinational firms to shed light on the role of freight logistics in multinational activity. Using a firm-level survey in Southeast Asia, we show that foreign ownership has a significantly positive and quantitatively large impact on the likelihood that...

By analyzing a comprehensive dataset on transport transactions in Japan, we describe a directional imbalance in freight rates by transport mode and examine its potential sources, such as economies of density and directionally imbalanced transport flow. There are certain numbers of observed links...

Foreign firms have clustered together in the Yangtze River Delta, and their impact on domestic firms is an important policy issue. This paper studies the spatial effect of FDI agglomeration on the regional productivity of domestic firms, using Chinese firm-level data. To identify local FDI...

Does investment liberalization in developing economies affect FDI decisions differently across individual firms? To address this question, we simulate the response of individual firms to reductions in investment costs across developing economies. We explore two policy experiments: elimination of...