Foreign direct investment - the major driving force of globalization - is increasingly dominated by merger and acquisition activities. Since the mid-1990s, an unprecedented wave of foreign direct investment and a corresponding wave of cross-border mergers and acquisitions can be observed. As a...

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...

This paper presents some ideas about determinants of merger waves and some evidence on their effect on profitability and employment. A brief survey of previous merger waves and an analysis of the recent one give support to the hypothesis that sectoral shocks are at the root of merger waves....

Available statistics tell us little about the economic consequences of increasing global dispersion of production processes. In order to shed light on the issue, we perform grass roots detective work to uncover the geography of value added in the case of a Nokia N95 smartphone circa 2007. The...

This paper reviews the recent literature on the relocation of headquarters (HQs). Overall results show that full and direct international relocations of corporate HQs are rare events. However, there is a trend that MNEs increasingly unbundle their HQs so as to spread their different HQs...

Using six years of firm-level data covering 224 regions of the enlarged European Union, we evaluate the importance to a firm of locating its activities (production, headquarters, R&D, logistics and sales) close together. We find that, after controlling for regional characteristics, being closely...

We embed a North-South trade model into an incomplete contracts setting where the production of heterogeneous firms can be geographically separated. When a Northern headquarter contracts with a Southern supplier instead of a Northern supplier, the presence of international incomplete contracts...

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...

The relationship between multinational enterprises (MNEs) and governments has evolved over time, from a period of conflict after World War II to a more cooperative relationship in the 1970s and 1980s (Dunning, 1993). In the 1990s, many host governments sought foreign direct investments (FDIs) by...

This paper examines the motives behind foreign direct investment (FDI) in a group of four CIS countries (Ukraine, Moldova, Georgia and Kyrgyzstan) based on a survey of 120 enterprises. The results indicate that non-oil multi-national enterprises (MNEs) are predominantly oriented at serving local...