Third Country Effects in Multinational Production Networks

The majority of multinational firms today operate a multilateral production network. Most existing empirical analyses have, however, focused on firms' choice between producing at home and investing overseas and assumed a firm's decision to invest in a foreign country is independent of its locations in third countries. This paper extends the literature by examining the effect of existing production network on multinationals' entry decision. Using detailed French multinational subsidiary-level data, the paper finds strong evidence of horizontal and vertical interdependence across multinationals' foreign production locations. There is, however, little evidence of horizontal interdependence between home-country production and foreign investment when the third-country effects are taken into account, constituting a sharp contrast to the conventional emphasis. This result is robust to the various specifications and sensitivity analyses undertaken in the paper, and suggests the importance of investigating the causes and effects of foreign direct investment in the context of multinational production networkmultinational firm, production network, interdependence, entry decision, trade cost, input-output linkage

Location decision of heterogeneous multinational firms

We examine how multinational firms with heterogeneous total factor productivity (TFP) self-select into different host countries. Both aggregate- and firm-level estimates suggest that more productive French firms are more likely than their less efficient competitors to invest in relatively tough host countries. Countries with a smaller market potential, higher fixed costs of investment or lower import tariffs tend to have higher cutoff productivities and attract a greater proportion of productive multinationals. This self-selection mechanism remains largely robust when we control for unobserved firm and country heterogeneity and address the potential TFP endogeneity.multinational firm, location decision, firm heterogeneity, productivity

Regionalism in standards - good or bad for trade?

Regional agreements on standards have been largely ignored by economists and unconditionally blessed by multilateral trade rules. The authors find, theoretically and empirically, that such agreements increase trade between participating countries but not necessarily with the rest of the world. Adopting a common standard in a region-that is, harmonization-boosts exports of excluded industrial countries to the region. But it reduces exports of excluded developing countries, possibly because developing country firms are hurt more by an increase in the stringency of standards and benefit less from economies of scale in integrated markets. Mutual recognition agreements are more uniformly trade promoting unless they contain restrictive rules of origin, in which case intra-regional trade increases at the expense of trade with other, especially developing, countries. The authors propose a modification of international trade rules to strike a better balance between the interests of integrating and excluded countries.Labor Policies,Economic Theory&Research,Trade Policy,Environmental Economics&Policies,Health Economics&Finance,Environmental Economics&Policies,TF054105-DONOR FUNDED OPERATION ADMINISTRATION FEE INCOME AND EXPENSE ACCOUNT,Trade and Regional Integration,Economic Theory&Research,Health Economics&Finance

Third-Country Effects on the Formation of Free Trade Agreements

The recent proliferation of free trade agreements (FTAs) has resulted in an in- creasingly complex network of preferential trading relationships. The economics literature has generally examined the formation of FTAs as a function of the par- ticipating countries' economic characteristics alone. In this paper, we show both theoretically and empirically that the decision to enter into an FTA is also crucially dependent on the participating countries' existing FTA relationships with third countries. Accounting for the interdependence of FTAs helps to explain a significant fraction of FTA formations that would not otherwise be predicted by countries' economic characteristics.free trade agreements, third-country e§ect, loss sharing, concession erosion

Surviving the global financial crisis : foreign ownership and establishment performance

This paper examines how different establishments performed during the recent global financial crisis, focusing on the role of foreign ownership. The paper investigates how foreign ownership affected establishments'responses to negative economic shocks, using a cross-country panel dataset with detailed information on operation, location and industry for more than 12 million establishments from 2005-2008. The evidence shows that multinational subsidiaries on average fared better than local counterfactuals with similar economic characteristics. Among multinational subsidiaries, establishments with stronger production and financial linkages with parent companies showed greater resilience. Finally, in contrast to the crisis period, the impact of foreign ownership and linkages on an establishment's performance was insignificant in non-crisis years.Economic Theory&Research,Investment and Investment Climate,Bankruptcy and Resolution of Financial Distress,Emerging Markets,Economic Conditions and Volatility

Location Decisions of Heterogeneous Multinational Firms

We examine how multinational Örms with heterogeneous total factor productivity (TFP) self-select into different host countries. Both aggregate- and Örm-level estimates suggest that more productive French Örms are more likely than their less efficient competitors to invest in relatively tough host countries. Countries with a smaller market potential, higher Öxed costs of investment or lower import tariffs tend to have higher cutoff productivities and attract a greater proportion of productive multinationals. This self-selection mechanism remains largely robust when we control for unobserved Örm and country heterogeneity and address the potential TFP endogeneity.multinational firm, location decision, firm heterogeneity, productivity

Do standards matter for export success ?

Standards and technical regulations are an increasingly prominent part of the international trade policy debate. In particular, there has been considerable discussion of whether standards and regulations affect trade costs and export prospects for developing countries. In this paper the authors examine how meeting foreign standards affects firms'export performance, reflected in export propensity and market diversification. The analysis draws on the World Bank Technical Barriers to Trade Survey database of 619 firms in 17 developing countries. The results indicate that technical regulations in industrial countries adversely affect firms'propensity to export in developing countries. In particular, testing procedures and lengthy inspection procedures reduce exports by 9 percent and 3percent, respectively. Furthermore, in the model, the difference in standards across foreign countries causes diseconomy of scale for firms and affects decisions about whether to enter export markets. The empirical analysis presented here implies that standards impede exporters'market entry, reducing the likelihood of exporting to more than three markets by 7 percent. In addition, the authors find that firms that outsource components are more challenged by compliance with multiple standards.Markets and Market Access,Small Scale Enterprise,Microfinance,Economic Theory&Research,Public Sector Regulation

Location decision of heterogeneous multinational firms

We examine how multinational firms with heterogeneous total factor productivity (TFP) self-select into different host countries. Both aggregate- and firm-level estimates suggest that more productive French firms are more likely than their less efficient competitors to invest in relatively tough host countries. Countries with a smaller market potential, higher fixed costs of investment or lower import tariffs tend to have higher cutoff productivities and attract a greater proportion of productive multinationals. This self-selection mechanism remains largely robust when we control for unobserved firm and country heterogeneity and address the potential TFP endogeneity

Location decision of heterogeneous multinational firms

We examine how multinational firms with heterogeneous total factor productivity (TFP) self-select into different host countries. Both aggregate- and firm-level estimates suggest that more productive French firms are more likely than their less efficient competitors to invest in relatively tough host countries. Countries with a smaller market potential, higher fixed costs of investment or lower import tariffs tend to have higher cutoff productivities and attract a greater proportion of productive multinationals. This self-selection mechanism remains largely robust when we control for unobserved firm and country heterogeneity and address the potential TFP endogeneity

Location Fundamentals, Agglomeration Economies, and the Geography of Multinational Firms

Multinationals exhibit distinct agglomeration patterns which have transformed the global landscape of industrial production (Alfaro and Chen, 2014). Using a unique worldwide plant-level dataset that reports detailed location, ownership, and operation information for plants in over 100 countries, we construct a spatially continuous index of pairwise-industry agglomeration and investigate the patterns and determinants underlying the global economic geography of multinational firms. In particular, we run a horse-race between two distinct economic forces: location fundamentals and agglomeration economies. We find that location fundamentals including market access and comparative advantage and agglomeration economies including capital-good market externality and technology diffusion play a particularly important role in multinationals' economic geography. These findings remain robust when we use alternative measures of trade costs, address potential reverse causality, and explore regional patterns