This research sheds light on the role of multinational production on the type of innovation performed by firms. We construct matched firm-patent data to measure the scope of innovation, that is the extent to which the output of R&D can be spread across different product lines. We focus on two...

Wholesale and retail trade affiliates owned by parent firms in manufacturing account for a considerable fraction of overall affiliate sales. Although quantitatively important, this Export-Supporting FDI (ESFDI) activity has received little attention in the literature. This paper includes ESFDI...

Intellectual Property Rights (IPR) protect firms from imitation and are considered crucial to promote innovation and technological diffusion. This paper examines the impact of IPR on import sourcing decisions of multinationals. We consider a framework in which firms offshore production of an...

The emergence of GVCs and recently superstar firms has been well documented, but less attention has been paid to what these joint developments mean for how we think about and need to examine FDI. Against this setting, I explore four dimensions of FDI: its conceptual aspects, measurement,...

This paper starts by unveiling a new empirical regularity: multinational corporations tend to exhibit systematically higher returns and earnings yields than non-multinational firms. Within non-multinationals, exporters tend to have higher earnings yields and returns than firms selling only in...

This paper uses micro-data from the World Bank Investment Climate Surveys 2002-2006 to investigate how foreign ownership and access to external finance affect the likelihood of manufacturers in emerging markets to export and/or import. Applying propensity score matching to control for...

This research sheds light on the role of multinational production on the type of innovation performed by firms. We construct matched firm-patent data to measure the scope of innovation, that is the extent to which the output of R&D can be spread across different product lines. We focus on two...

This paper constructs five indicators that a multinational firm must take into account when deciding the location of its offshore units. These indicators are: human capital; skilled labour cost; quality of infrastructure; business environment; and market size. The indicators are based on over 100...

We extend the Behrens et al. (2009) general equilibrium heterogeneous firms framework by horizontal foreign direct investment. The model features endogenously determined firm entrants, wages, productivity cutoff s, flexible price markups and allows for wage differentials across countries in...

This paper studies the effect of foreign direct investment (FDI) on environmental policy stringency in a two-country model with trade costs, where FDI could be unilateral and bilateral and both governments address local pollution through environmental taxes. We show that FDI does not give rise...