This paper develops a simple real options model that demonstrates the role of country-specific risk and sunk costs in determining a multinational’s choice between exports and foreign investment. The hypotheses from the model are tested for the distribution of capital expenditures by U.S.-owned...

Income earned by the branches and subsidiaries of multinational firms can be either reinvested in the host country or repatriated as dividends to the firms'' headquarters. Despite the rapid growth of foreign direct investment in the 1990s, there has been relatively limited analysis of the...

Based on U.S. data, the returns on foreign direct investment in emerging markets are shown to be substantially higher than would be suggested by official balance of payments statistics. This paper identifies the determinants of FDI profitability in 43 industrialized and developing countries....