The virtual economy argument for Russia suggests that barter -a payment in goods rather than cash - allows the parties to pretend that the manufacturing sector is producing value added by enabling this sector to sell its output at a higher price than its market value. We confront this prediction...

Starting with the international debt crisis in the early 1980s, the volume of international barter trade increased substantially. This paper examines how barter can help highly indebted countries to finance imports if they cannot use standard credit arrangements. We argue that payment in goods...

Globalization has been identified by many experts as a new way firms organize their activities and also as the emergence of talent as the new stakeholder in the firm. This Paper examines the role of trade integration for the changing nature of the corporation. International trade leads to a...

Recent literature on international trade has established that the most productive firms become multinationals. But our data reveal a startling variation in productivity levels of foreign affiliates across the countries in Eastern Europe of the same European multinational parent firms suggesting...

Intro -- Contents -- Preface -- Introduction -- 1. Contractual Frictions and Global Sourcing -- 2. The Boundaries of the Multinational Firm: An Empirical Analysis -- 3. Contract Enforcement, Comparative Advantage, and Long-Run Growth -- 4. The Dynamics of Firm-Level Adjustment to Trade...