This paper uses micro-data from the World Bank Investment Climate Surveys 2002-2006 to investigate how foreign ownership and access to external finance affect the likelihood of manufacturers in emerging markets to export and/or import. Applying propensity score matching to control for...

While countries make use of a wide range of policies to attract multinational firms, identifying the effect of such policies is difficult. Combining firm-level data on both the location of these firms’ foreign affiliates and detailed service-specific information from Costa Rica’s investment...

The exceptional export performance of foreign-owned firms is a well-established stylized fact, but the underlying mechanism is not yet fully understood. In this paper, we provide theory and empirical evidence demonstrating that this fact can be explained by ownership differences in access to...

The exceptional export performance of foreign-owned firms is a well-established stylized fact, but the underlying mechanism is not yet fully understood. In this paper, we provide theory and empirical evidence demonstrating that this fact can be explained by ownership differences in access to...

Global value chains have fundamentally transformed international trade and development in recent decades. We use matched firm-level customs and manufacturing survey data, together with Input-Output tables for China, to examine how Chinese firms position themselves in global production lines and...

Casual observation suggests that cultural differences play an important role in business transactions, yet systematic evidence on this relationship is scarce. This paper provides a novel investigation of the effect of cultural distance on multinational firms’ decisions to integrate their...

How did the rise of multinational enterprises (MNEs) put pressure on the prevailing international corporate tax framework? MNEs, and firms with market power, are not new phenomena, nor is the corporate income tax, which dates to the early 20th century. This prompts the question, what is...

We investigate the link between productivity of firms and their sourcing behavior. Following Antràs & Helpman (2004) we distinguish between domestic and foreign sourcing, as well as between outsourcing and vertical integration. A firm’s choice is driven by a hold-up problem caused by lack of...