Determinants and effects of foreign direct investment: evidence from German firm-level data

"Foreign direct investment is an essential aspect of 'globalization' yet its empirical determinants are not well understood. What we do know is based either on poor data for a wide range of nations, or good data for the US and Swedish cases. In this paper, we provide evidence on the determinants of the activities of German multinational firms by using a newly available firm-level data set from the Deutsche Bundesbank. The specific goal of this paper is to demonstrate the relative role of country-level and firm-level determinants of foreign direct investment. We focus on three main questions: First, what are the main driving forces of German firms' multinational activities? Second, is there evidence that sector-level and firm-level factors shape internationalization patterns? Third, is there evidence of agglomeration effects in the foreign activities of German firms?" Copyright � CEPR, CES, MSH, 2005..

Determination of pH or lactate in fetal scalp blood in management of intrapartum fetal distress: randomised controlled multicentre trial

Objective To examine the effectiveness of pH analysis of fetal scalp blood compared with lactate analysis in identifying hypoxia in labour to prevent acidaemia at birth