Foreign Direct Investment, Competitive Pressure and Spillovers. An Empirical Analysis on Spanish Firm Level Data

A short review of the theoretical and empirical evidence indicates that Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) has the potential to increase the intensity of competition as well as to act as a channel for technology transfers. One would expect, all else equal, an increase in average productivity following a wave of FDI, as multinational corporations (MNCs) enjoy higher levels of e¢ciency. At the same time, the entry of foreign firms has also been associated with an increase in competitive pressure on the domestic market. Using a large …rm level data set covering all sectors of Spanish manufacturing during the period 1983-1996, we attempt to disentangle these two effects by estimating a dynamic model of firm level profitability. We find that FDI has a positive long-run e¤ect on the pro…tability of target firms, but this is limited to firms belonging to R&D intensive sectors. In addition, the results indicate that foreign presence dampens margins. However, this e¤ect appears to be more than compensated by positive spillovers in the case of knowledge intensive industries.Foreign Direct Investment; Technology Transfer; E¢-

External factors in emerging market recoveries: an empirical investigation.

We estimate conditional duration models to analyse recovery processes in emerging market economies. Our reduced fonn specification is parsimonious, as we focus on the effect of growth in the US, EU, and Japan on the prospects for recovery in emerging market economies experiencing recessions. In order to assess the robustness and forecasting capability of our results, we perfonned out-of-sample predictions using recently available data pertaining to the economies hit by the Asis crisis. The model successfully predicts the bouncing back of most emerging market economies hit by the Asian crisis, and confinns the importance of external factor in recovery processes.Emerging markets; Recessions; Duration; IS-LM;

External Factors in Emerging Market Recoveries: An Empirical Investigation

We estimate conditional duration models to analyse recovery processes in emerging market economies. Our reduced form specification is parsimonious, as we focus on the effect of growth in the US, EU, and Japan on the prospects for economic recovery in emerging markets experiencing recessions. In order to assess the robustness and forecasting capability of our results, we performed out-of-sample predictions using recently available data pertaining to the economies hit by the Asian crisis. The results of this exercise show that external factors beyond the control of the authorities can sucessfully explain the bouncing back of most emerging markets economies hit by the Asian crisis.

Insights into International Service

The concept and institutions of an international civil service have been studied by numerous authors. The works reviewed in this article, by Brian Urquhart, Shirley Hazzard, Henry Cabot Lodge, Richard Symonds and Michael Carder, and Alexander Szalai with Margaret Croke and Associates, are all related to the UN Secretariat, its successes and its failures. The practice of multilateral diplomacy as conducted by the Secretary General of the UN, personnel policies and national interference in the UN administration, relations between the international Secretariat and member governments on the one hand and with the media on the other, as well as the role of international civil servants in promoting social reform are discussed. The works under review are found to contain conflicting images of the UN and its Secretaria

Computing abuse related damages in the case of new entry: An illustration for the Directory Enquiry Services market

A number of European countries, among which the UK and Spain, have opened up their Directory Enquiry Services (DQs, or 118AB) market to competition. We analyse the Spanish case, where both local and foreign firms challenged the incumbent as of April 2003. We argue that the incumbent had the ability to abuse its dominant position, and that it was a perfectly rational strategy. In short,the incumbent raised its rivals' costs directly by providing an inferior quality version of the (essential) input, namely the incumbent's subscribers' database. We illustrate how it is possible to quantify the effect of abuse in situation were the entrant has no previous history in the market. To do this, we use the UK experience to construct the relevant counterfactual, that is the "but for abuse" scenario. After controlling for relative prices and advertising intensity, we find that one of the foreign entrants achieved a Spanish market share of only half of what it would have been in the absence of abuse.competition policy, abuse of dominance, telecommunications

The Secretariat of the United Nations Economic Commission for Europe and European Economic Integration: The First Ten Years

Before entering into the substance of our subject it would be useful to define three terms which appear in this article and which bear differing connotations in the writings of political scientists working in the field of international organization. These are: integration, international secretariat, and executive actio

Some notes on the military in Greek politics

[Δε διατίθεται περίληψη][No abstract available

Market power, total factor productivity growth, and structural change. An illustration for Spain, 1983-1996

Este trabajo analiza la evolucion del crecimiento de la productividad total de los factores y del poder de mercado en España en el periodo 1983-1996. Los datos utilizados son un amplio conjunto de empresas individuales de todos los sectores, excepto el financiero. Se comprueba que la forma tradicional de medir el crecimiento da pobres resultados, a menos que se tenga en cuenta el poder de mercado de las empresas. El trabajo caracteriza dicho poder de mercado para la economia española bajo diferentes especificaciones y tecnicas de estimacion. (gs) (ad