This paper provides new evidence on international productivity gaps; this evidence is obtained from large-scale firm-level data from the French and Japanese manufacturing industries using non-parametric methodologies designed to overcome confidentiality restrictions. Our primary finding is that...

This paper examines the agglomeration effects of multinational firms on the location decisions of first-time Japanese manufacturing investors in China for the period 1995–2007. This is accomplished by exploiting newly constructed measures of inter-firm backward and forward linkages formed in a...

This study employs confidential affiliate-level panel data to improve measures of foreign affiliate activities of Japanese firms in manufacturing sectors. Combining existing data on U.S. MNCs with the Japanese data, we illustrate the pattern and determinant of their foreign affiliate sales by...

Myriad hypotheses have been advanced to explain the dismal performance of the post-1990 Japanese economy. In this paper we use plant and firm data to investigate the issue. The low rate of productivity growth in Japan is also often seen as a product of Japanese MNEs offshoring production and...

This paper investigates why multinational ownership is found to increase the probability that a plant will exit. It does so by using Japanese plant data linked to firm data. Plants belonging to a multinational are 9 percentage points more likely to exit when plant, firm and industry...

Previous studies of job creation and job destruction (JCJD) have found that the gross job reallocation rate greatly exceeded the net job creation rate even in a narrowly defined industry or the same international trade orientation. This paper asks whether multinational enterprises (MNEs) reflect...

This paper examines the determinants of the backward vertical linkages of Japanese foreign affiliates in manufacturing for the period 1994-2000, focusing on the local backward linkages, or local procurements in the host country. Our major findings are twofold. First, the unobserved...

This study examines the determinants of location choices of foreign affiliates by manufacturing Japanese firms, using a new data set that matches parents and their affiliates created over the years 1995-2003. The analysis is based on new economic geography theory and thus focuses on the effect...

We examine the location choices of the foreign affiliates of Japanese manufacturing firms, using a new data set that matches parents to the affiliates they created over the 1995-2003 period. The analysis is based on new economic geography theory, and thus focuses on the effect of market and...

Summary This paper examines the determinants of the backward vertical linkages of Japanese foreign affiliates in manufacturing for the period 1994-2000, focusing on the local backward linkages, or local procurement in the host country. Our major findings are twofold. First, the unobserved...