Essays in Multinational Firms and Productivity Growth of Domestically-owned Firms

Essays in Multinational Firms and Productivity Growth of Domestically-owned Firms PDF Author: Hye Lin Choi
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 64

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Book Description
Differences in income across countries are largely explained by productivity variations, and a large variation in productivity is as much due to foreign as to domestic innovation. Among others, foreign direct investment (FDI) and trade have long been suspected to be major conduits of international technology transfer. Since multinational firms are well known to be larger and more productive and to do more R&D than purely domestically-owned firms, they may have advanced technology and the entry of multinational firms may transfer their modern technology to domestic firms. Also, there are plausible mechanisms through which advanced technology of multinational firms is transferred to the domestic firms such as worker turnover, product imitation, and vertical backward/forward linkages. However, even though economists and policy makers have devoted considerable attention to the technology spillovers from foreign to domestic firms based on plausible arguments for positive impacts from multinational firms, they have not come to a common conclusion. In my first chapter, "Multinational Enterprises and Productivity Growth of Domestic Firms: Firm-Level Evidence from Canada", I estimate FDI spillovers to Canada manufacturing firms between 1994 and 2005. In order to measure productivity more properly, I adopt the Olley-Pakes method, and I apply instrumental variable estimation to solve endogeneity problem. My results suggest that there are substantial positive within-industry spillovers by FDI. In addition, my results show that larger firms benefit more from FDI spillovers and the spillovers mainly occur within low-tech industries. Those results contrast with earlier work, indicating that earlier work cannot be generalized to other countries and periods. In the second chapter, "Knowledge Spillovers through Multinational Firms in High-Tech and Low-Tech Industries" in order to have a deep understanding of the complex FDI knowledge spillovers, I disaggregate the total spillovers into high- and low-tech industries, in contrast with earlier work that have only examined its aggregate spillovers. Also, I develop a simple theory to explain the mechanism through which new technology of the foreign firms is transmitted to the domestic firms by analyzing the endogenous decision of multinational firms on the location of production of intermediate goods. The model shows different patterns of knowledge spillovers in the high- and low-tech industries: immediate catch-up to the foreign firm's advanced technology but unsustainable technology spillovers in the low-tech sectors while slow catch-up to the foreign firm's technology but continual knowledge spillovers in the high-tech sectors. The U.S. data for the years 1987-1995, broken down into high- and low-tech industries, support the model. The pattern of knowledge spillovers in the high- and low-tech industries are hump-shaped, but in low-tech industries it reaches its peak after a sharp increase while in the high-tech industries it hits its peak following a smooth increase.

Essays in Multinational Firms and Productivity Growth of Domestically-owned Firms

Essays in Multinational Firms and Productivity Growth of Domestically-owned Firms PDF Author: Hye Lin Choi
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 64

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Book Description
Differences in income across countries are largely explained by productivity variations, and a large variation in productivity is as much due to foreign as to domestic innovation. Among others, foreign direct investment (FDI) and trade have long been suspected to be major conduits of international technology transfer. Since multinational firms are well known to be larger and more productive and to do more R&D than purely domestically-owned firms, they may have advanced technology and the entry of multinational firms may transfer their modern technology to domestic firms. Also, there are plausible mechanisms through which advanced technology of multinational firms is transferred to the domestic firms such as worker turnover, product imitation, and vertical backward/forward linkages. However, even though economists and policy makers have devoted considerable attention to the technology spillovers from foreign to domestic firms based on plausible arguments for positive impacts from multinational firms, they have not come to a common conclusion. In my first chapter, "Multinational Enterprises and Productivity Growth of Domestic Firms: Firm-Level Evidence from Canada", I estimate FDI spillovers to Canada manufacturing firms between 1994 and 2005. In order to measure productivity more properly, I adopt the Olley-Pakes method, and I apply instrumental variable estimation to solve endogeneity problem. My results suggest that there are substantial positive within-industry spillovers by FDI. In addition, my results show that larger firms benefit more from FDI spillovers and the spillovers mainly occur within low-tech industries. Those results contrast with earlier work, indicating that earlier work cannot be generalized to other countries and periods. In the second chapter, "Knowledge Spillovers through Multinational Firms in High-Tech and Low-Tech Industries" in order to have a deep understanding of the complex FDI knowledge spillovers, I disaggregate the total spillovers into high- and low-tech industries, in contrast with earlier work that have only examined its aggregate spillovers. Also, I develop a simple theory to explain the mechanism through which new technology of the foreign firms is transmitted to the domestic firms by analyzing the endogenous decision of multinational firms on the location of production of intermediate goods. The model shows different patterns of knowledge spillovers in the high- and low-tech industries: immediate catch-up to the foreign firm's advanced technology but unsustainable technology spillovers in the low-tech sectors while slow catch-up to the foreign firm's technology but continual knowledge spillovers in the high-tech sectors. The U.S. data for the years 1987-1995, broken down into high- and low-tech industries, support the model. The pattern of knowledge spillovers in the high- and low-tech industries are hump-shaped, but in low-tech industries it reaches its peak after a sharp increase while in the high-tech industries it hits its peak following a smooth increase.

Essays on Multinational Firms, Financial Frictions, and Income in Developing Countries

Essays on Multinational Firms, Financial Frictions, and Income in Developing Countries PDF Author: Yunfan Gu
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 124

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Book Description
The dissertation contributes to our understanding of how multinational firms and financial frictions affect income in developing countries. From a policy perspective, I find that as developing countries open up to multinational firms, financial reforms become increasingly beneficial to national income in the countries. I also find that the joint ventures of foreign multinational firms with state-owned firms, an industrial policy in China, prevent technology spillovers and suppress industrial output. The dissertation consists of three chapters. Chapter 1: Financial frictions, Multinational Firms, and Income in Developing Countries: Theoretical Analysis Financial frictions create resource misallocation across heterogeneous production units and reduce national income (GNP) in developing countries. Multinational firms, however, can largely circumvent local financial frictions by borrowing from international sources. In this chapter, I theoretically study whether the presence of multinational firms in developing countries alleviates the adverse impact of financial frictions on national income. I show that in a developing economy that is open to multinational firms, if domestic firms produce a sufficiently large (small) share of output, financial frictions will cause a larger (smaller) decline in national income than in an otherwise identical developing economy that is closed to multinational firms. Such result calls for the quantitative analysis in the next chapter. Chapter 2: Financial frictions, Multinational Firms, and Income in Developing Countries: Quantitative Analysis In this chapter, I quantitatively study how the presence of multinational firms in developing countries change the adverse impact of financial frictions on national income. Using a calibrated structural model, I find that when a developing economy is open to multinational firms, a modest financial reform that reduces financial frictions in the developing economy will increase national income by 19%, as opposed to only 11% when the economy is closed to multinational firms. Such result indicates that financial frictions become increasingly costly and financial reforms become increasingly beneficial to national income in developing countries as they open up to multinational production. Chapter 3, Joint Ventures and Technology Spillovers in China Chinese government actively promotes joint ventures of foreign multinational firms with state-owned firms. In this chapter, I study the effects of the joint ventures in promoting technology spillovers. Using firm-level data in China, I find that higher joint venture presence in a sector leads to higher productivity of firms in the upstream of that sector, but lower productivity of firms in the downstream of that sector. A quantitative analysis suggests that the later force will dominate, and joint ventures will on aggregate prevent technology spillovers and cause a significant decline in total industrial output in China.

Essays in Trade, Innovation, and Productivity

Essays in Trade, Innovation, and Productivity PDF Author: Kaiji Gong
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages :

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Book Description
This dissertation explores the determinants of firms' productivity growth and innovation activities. The first chapter studies the local technology spillover effects originated from multinational firms' innovation activities. The second chapter discusses the impact of import competition from China on U.S. firms' innovation activities. The third chapter introduces a new measure of firm-level regulation, and examines the consequences of rising regulation intensity in the U.S. on firms' production choices. Chapter 1 identifies the causal impact of U.S. multinationals' technology advances on their subsidiaries and the nearby domestic firms' productivity in China. By combining firm-level panel data from both the U.S. and China, I match U.S. multinationals with their manufacturing subsidiaries in China and measure the multinationals' technology stocks based on their patenting activities. To address potential endogeneity concerns, I introduce an instrumental variable strategy based on the U.S. state level R& D tax credit policies. I find multinationals' technology improvements induce increase in the output and total factor productivity (TFP) of both their subsidiaries and domestic firms in local areas. The magnitude of technology spillovers hinges on local firms' absorptive capacities, and their technological connections to the multinationals. Chapter 2 (co-authored with Rui Xu) analyzes the impact of rising import competition from China on U.S. innovative activities. Using Compustat data, we find that import competition induces R& D expenditures to be reallocated towards more productive and more profitable firms within each industry. Such reallocation effect has the potential to offset the average drop in firm-level R& D identified in the previous literature. Indeed, our quantitative analysis shows no adverse impact of import competition on aggregate R& D expenditures. Taking the analysis beyond manufacturing, we find that import competition has led to reallocation of researchers towards booming service industries, including business and repairs, personal, and financial services. Chapter 3 (co-authored with Constantine Yannelis) introduces a new measure of firm-level regulation. We find that more regulation increases labor and capital inputs. Productivity decreases, which is consistent with a model of regulation inducing non-productive investment. We employ two empirical strategies to identify the causal impact of regulation on firms, first, utilizing structural breaks and industry level regulation changes, and second, computing predicted industry level regulation measures as instruments. We conduct an event study using the surprise 2016 US election results. Firms with higher Dodd-Frank exposure exhibited higher returns following an increase in the probability of repeal.

Making It Big

Making It Big PDF Author: Andrea Ciani
Publisher: World Bank Publications
ISBN: 1464815585
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 178

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Book Description
Economic and social progress requires a diverse ecosystem of firms that play complementary roles. Making It Big: Why Developing Countries Need More Large Firms constitutes one of the most up-to-date assessments of how large firms are created in low- and middle-income countries and their role in development. It argues that large firms advance a range of development objectives in ways that other firms do not: large firms are more likely to innovate, export, and offer training and are more likely to adopt international standards of quality, among other contributions. Their particularities are closely associated with productivity advantages and translate into improved outcomes not only for their owners but also for their workers and for smaller enterprises in their value chains. The challenge for economic development, however, is that production does not reach economic scale in low- and middle-income countries. Why are large firms scarcer in developing countries? Drawing on a rare set of data from public and private sources, as well as proprietary data from the International Finance Corporation and case studies, this book shows that large firms are often born large—or with the attributes of largeness. In other words, what is distinct about them is often in place from day one of their operations. To fill the “missing top†? of the firm-size distribution with additional large firms, governments should support the creation of such firms by opening markets to greater competition. In low-income countries, this objective can be achieved through simple policy reorientation, such as breaking oligopolies, removing unnecessary restrictions to international trade and investment, and establishing strong rules to prevent the abuse of market power. Governments should also strive to ensure that private actors have the skills, technology, intelligence, infrastructure, and finance they need to create large ventures. Additionally, they should actively work to spread the benefits from production at scale across the largest possible number of market participants. This book seeks to bring frontier thinking and evidence on the role and origins of large firms to a wide range of readers, including academics, development practitioners and policy makers.

Essays on International Macroeconomics, Productivity Growth, and Firm Dynamics

Essays on International Macroeconomics, Productivity Growth, and Firm Dynamics PDF Author: Xiaomei Sui
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Economic development
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
"This dissertation consists of essays studying how macroeconomic outcomes, particularly aggregate productivity growth, are affected by the change in market environment or market frictions in the presence of heterogeneous firms from an international perspective. Each chapter employs both empirical and quantitative macroeconomic methods. The first chapter studies how globalization contributes to uneven firm growth and its implications for industrial concentration and productivity growth in OECD countries. I document new facts showing that industry leaders grow faster in sales and patenting than followers, particularly in industries with increasing export intensities; sales divergence is mainly driven by exports rather than domestic sales. To rationalize these facts, I develop a two-country endogenous growth model with strategic domestic and international competition and an 'innovation disadvantage of backwardness' that captures how firms innovate less when left behind. Globalization, modelled as decreasing trade iceberg costs and increasing international knowledge spillovers, triggers a stronger innovation response among leaders than followers via the market size effect, inducing an increase in domestic concentration that depresses firm innovation via weaker domestic competition: followers and leaders reduce innovation due to the innovation dis-advantage of backwardness and decreasing returns to innovation, respectively. The globalization-induced harsher foreign competition also reduces innovation via lower profits. In the calibrated model, globalization explains 80% of the rise in industrial concentration and 50% of the productivity growth slowdown in the data, mainly due to weaker domestic competition. The increasing international knowledge spillover force of globalization dominates. The second chapter studies how the less-developed financial market in Southern European countries contributes to their slower aggregate productivity growth than developed European countries since the information and communications technology revolution. I document that Southern European firms have lower productivity growth, lower intangible capital growth, and lower leverage than developed European firms. The disparity is larger among smaller firms. To rationalize these findings, I build a model featuring endogenous firm productivity growth through innovation investment and size-dependent financial frictions. Financial frictions lower productivity growth via two channels: innovation investment and misallocation. The model finds that financial frictions account for at least 11% of the aggregate productivity growth difference in the data, mainly via the innovation investment channel. The model also highlights that fast capital and output growth may coexist with slow productivity growth due to firms' tradeoffs in allocating a constrained amount of investment between capital and productivity."--Pages viii-ix.

Multinational Firms, Innovation and Productivity

Multinational Firms, Innovation and Productivity PDF Author: D. Castellani
Publisher: Edward Elgar Publishing
ISBN: 1847201598
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 263

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Book Description
The book assumes an original place in the literature. . . Castellani and Zanfei show that the economic impact of MNEs on innovation and productivity depends on evolutionary features of firms and industries, particularly on the heterogeneity of firm strategies and behaviours. . . this volume contains high-quality, well-written research. . . Simona Iammarino, Research Policy . . . this book offers the reader a well-written and very comprehensive analysis on the link between innovation and internalization which leads to insights into firm heterogeneity. The authors have succeeded in synthesizing the vast body of theoretical and empirical research and given an up-to-date overview of the various issues involved. This is then complemented with their own research findings. . . The book will undoubtedly enrich the debate on the behavior and impact of MNEs. Yama Temouri, Journal of International Business Studies Davide Castellani and Antonello Zanfei, two well-known Italian economists, have brought forth an excellent new book. . . I think this book will serve as a starting-point for many interesting studies, both because of its findings and because of its empirical and theoretical rigour. . . the book lays an excellent and empirically well founded foundation that opens the way for what we need most in research on the international innovatory activities and R&D configurations of MNCs: intrafirm data and the study of intrafirm processes, configurations and specific interactions with the host country environment. The book to me is an important step in moving innovation research forward in this direction. . . I am sure that this book will serve as a thought-provoking starting point for many future studies on firms international innovatory activities and therefore recommend it without any reservation. Marcus M. Keupp, Creativity and Innovation Management Castellani and Zanfei have developed an original and comprehensive analysis of the role of multinational firms in the transfer, creation and diffusion of technology. By developing their view of the multinationals as double network institutions , the authors provide new insights on a variety of key issues at the frontier of economics of international production and innovation. This book is thought-provoking, incisive and topical, and should be required reading for both economists and policymakers alike. Rajneesh Narula, University of Reading, UK Castellani and Zanfei present an in-depth theoretical and empirical analysis of the key issues underpinning the relationship between innovation and multinationality. This book is strongly-recommended reading for any researcher working on innovation or multinationality or the interface between the two. Grazia Ietto-Gillies, London South Bank University, UK This book gets to the root of how and why multinational firms differ in the cross-border creation, transfer and diffusion of technology, and provides fresh evidence on the effects that these differences have on productivity and innovation in the economic systems in which they are active. Davide Castellani and Antonello Zanfei consider multinationals as heterogeneous institutions that combine internal networks of subsidiaries with external networks of collaborative linkages, to bridge different economic and innovation systems. They examine heterogeneity in productivity and innovative behaviour between multinational and national firms, as well as across and within multinationals. The authors argue that not every foreign firm is a good source of externality, and not every domestic firm is equally well placed to benefit from multinationals. It is shown that spillovers from multinationals differ according to the technological profiles, embeddedness and linkage creation of both foreign and domestic firms active in local markets. The book supports this view with empirical evidence based on illustrative case studies, and on econometric analysis using extensive firm-level datasets on multinati

Essays on International Productivity Growth and Technological Diffusion

Essays on International Productivity Growth and Technological Diffusion PDF Author: Maurice David Kugler
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 438

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Three Essays on International Trade and Multinational Firms

Three Essays on International Trade and Multinational Firms PDF Author: Nathaniel P. S. Cook
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Commercial treaties
Languages : en
Pages : 196

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Essays on International Trade with Heterogeneous Firms

Essays on International Trade with Heterogeneous Firms PDF Author: Luca David Opromolla
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Chile
Languages : en
Pages : 156

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Essays on International Trade and Industry Dynamics

Essays on International Trade and Industry Dynamics PDF Author: Bernardo Diaz De Astarloa
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages :

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Book Description
This dissertation consists on three essays on international trade and industry dynamics. All three essays study empirical applications of open economy environments with heterogeneous firms who make decisions over time.The first essay studies trade policy and the dynamics of the solar photovoltaic manufacturing industry in the U.S. In it I develop a computable, continuous-time dynamic model of the industry where domestic firms engage in price competition against each other and an importing sector to sell solar panels to domestic consumers. Firms can attain cost reductions through learning by doing and R&D investments. I use the model to estimate its main parameters using firm-level survey data from the Department of Energy and then simulate the application of countervailing duties to imports of solar panels, analyzing the implications for the evolution of the industry and welfare. In a scenario where a 30% duty is applied to imports, domestic firms respond by increasing R&D expenditures, therefore increasing productivity and setting lower prices, even when concentration increases as high productivity domestic firms gain market share.The second essay is on the dynamics of the textiles and garments industry in Bangladesh. First, it shows that, in contrast to the standard description of entry into foreign markets, Bangladeshi exporters are fully committed to foreign markets, exporting most of their output abroad; they start big, not small, and show high survival rates once they start exporting. They are born to export firms who operate in orphan industries, with essentially missing domestic demand for their products. In addition to the usual fixed and sunk costs of exporting, they must face presumably higher costs of starting up new businesses. Then it compares these patterns with those of China, Colombia and Taiwan, and find similar but less-striking patterns for China. These features seem to be missing in Taiwan and Colombia, which accord with other typical cases described in the literature. Finally, it adapts a search and learning model of export dynamics to show how the presence of high sunk costs of establishing a new business and the absence of a domestic market can generate export trajectories similar to the ones we observe in Bangladesh. The third essay focuses on the links between productivity and exporting. The trade literature has identified three relationships. First, that productivity causes exporting, so that there is selection into exporting by more productive firms. Second, that exporting generates productivity growth through, for example, learning-by-exporting. Third, that firms make choices that make them more productive in preparation to export. The essay shows that patterns of Chinese exporters are consistent with all three hypotheses. Exporters are more productive than non-exporters, which is consistent with selection. For successful exporters, most of the productivity growth during the period occurred after entering export markets, rather than before. For unsuccessful exporters, on the other hand, this pattern is reversed. Average annual productivity growth, however, is higher prior to entry for both groups. Finally, new exporters increase sales expenditures and earn higher revenue from new products than other firms before they start exporting. This is true when compared to both non-exporters and continuous exporters.