Effects of mergers and acquisitions on the economy: an industrial organization perspective

Consolidation and merger of corporations ; Industries

Competing for a duopoly : international trade and tax competition

Oligopoly is empirically prevalent in the industries where MNEs operate and national governments compete with fiscal inducements for their FDI projects. Despite this, existing formal treatments of fiscal competition generally focus on the polar cases of perfect competition and monopoly. We consider the competition between two potential host governments to attract the investment of both firms in a duopolistic industry. Competition by identical countries for a monopoly firm's investment is known to result in a 'race to the bottom' where all rents are captured by the firm through subsidies. We demonstrate that with two firms, both are taxed in equilibrium, despite the explicit non-cooperation between governments. When countries differ in size, a single firm will be attracted to the larger market. We explore the conditions under which both firms in the duopoly co-locate and when each nation attracts a firm in equilibrium. Our results are consistent with the observed stability of effective corporate tax rates in the face of ongoing globalization, and our analysis readily generalizes to many specifications with oligopoly in the product markets

The effects of entry on incumbent innovation and productivity

How does firm entry affect innovation incentives in incumbent firms? Microdata suggest that there is heterogeneity across industries. Specifically, incumbent productivity growth and patenting is positively correlated with lagged greenfield foreign firm entry in technologically advanced industries, but not in laggard industries. In this paper we provide evidence that these correlations arise from a causal effect predicted by Schumpeterian growth theory—the threat of technologically advanced entry spurs innovation incentives in sectors close to the technology frontier, where successful innovation allows incumbents to survive the threat, but discourages innovation in laggard sectors, where the threat reduces incumbents' expected rents from innovating. We find that the empirical patterns hold using rich micro panel data for the United Kingdom. We control for the endogeneity of entry by exploiting major European and U.K. policy reforms, and allow for endogeneity of additional factors. We complement the analysis for foreign entry with evidence for domestic entry and entry through imports

Spillovers from Multinationals in Developing Countries: the Mechanisms at Work

Most research suggests that spillovers commonly benefit the productivity of LDCs' local firms from market contacts with foreign subsidiaries, but little attention has gone to where those spillovers might be large, where nonexistent. In Particular, LDC local firms can be constrained away from frontier effectiveness in at least four ways. Each constraint has different implications for the nature and extent of spillovers from foreign subsidiaries. The analysis also yields predictions how spillovers will vary with differences in the situations of subsidiaries and local competitors, and with elements of the structures of industries in which they operate. Limited empirical evidence supports the predictions and the general approach to refining our expectations about the prevalence and nature of spillovers.http://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/39633/3/wp247.pd

Metaontology, emergence and theory choice: in defence of Mereological Nihilism.

This thesis offers detailed remarks on debates in metametaphysics, the question of ontological emergence and the merits of extra-empirical theory choice criteria, such as ontological and ideological parsimony, in the course of defending Mereological Nihilism (nihilism). Part I is primarily a discussion of the metaontology of the composition debate and how nihilism begins to look like a more attractive theory once a certain metaontological framework is adopted. §0. provides an overview of the background assumptions of my thesis and outlines the dialectical strategy I will be employing. §1. Explains why a strategy is needed to reconcile revisionary ontological claims, such as nihilism, with common sense: I argue for the Ontologese Strategy (OS) over the more established neo-Quinean paraphrase strategy. §2. Elucidates OS and defends it from objections, while §3. discusses the status of non-fundamental existential claims on OS and responds to further objections. §4. Employs OS to defend nihilism from epistemic dismissivism, which threatens to undercut the prima facie theoretical advantages of nihilism— demonstrating the utility of OS in advancing the first order debate. In Part II I defend nihilism from what I take to be the major challenge to the theory once certain metaontological assumptions are in place: the epistemic possibility of ontological emergence. §5. sets out the main line of defence – a strategy employing plural instantiation. §6. explores alternative strategies such as entanglement relations, fundamental indeterminacy and extended simples. §7. Looks at arguments for monism vs. pluralism in light of putative emergence from quantum mechanics and argues there is conceptual room for a third way – Local Holism. §8. Tries to bolster the assumption of this thesis that parsimony considerations are relevant to the composition debate. In §9. I make some concluding remarks for the thesis as a whole

Spillovers from Multinationals in Developing Countries: the Mechanisms at Work

Most research suggests that spillovers commonly benefit the productivity of LDCs' local firms from market contacts with foreign subsidiaries, but little attention has gone to where those spillovers might be large, where nonexistent. In Particular, LDC local firms can be constrained away from frontier effectiveness in at least four ways. Each constraint has different implications for the nature and extent of spillovers from foreign subsidiaries. The analysis also yields predictions how spillovers will vary with differences in the situations of subsidiaries and local competitors, and with elements of the structures of industries in which they operate. Limited empirical evidence supports the predictions and the general approach to refining our expectations about the prevalence and nature of spillovers.multinational enterprise, spillovers, managerial capability, community based standards

Nearly Instantaneous Alternatives in Quantum Mechanics

Usual quantum mechanics predicts probabilities for the outcomes of measurements carried out at definite moments of time. However, realistic measurements do not take place in an instant, but are extended over a period of time. The assumption of instantaneous alternatives in usual quantum mechanics is an approximation whose validity can be investigated in the generalized quantum mechanics of closed systems in which probabilities are predicted for spacetime alternatives that extend over time. In this paper we investigate how alternatives extended over time reduce to the usual instantaneous alternatives in a simple model in non-relativistic quantum mechanics. Specifically, we show how the decoherence of a particular set of spacetime alternatives becomes automatic as the time over which they extend approaches zero and estimate how large this time can be before the interference between the alternatives becomes non-negligible. These results suggest that the time scale over which coarse grainings of such quantities as the center of mass position of a massive body may be extended in time before producing significant interference is much longer than characteristic dynamical time scales.Comment: 12 pages, harvmac, no figure