An aspect of globalization that has attracted increased attention in recent years is trade in intermediate inputs associated with the fragmentation of production across national borders. This trade takes the form of intrafirm transactions when production stages in different countries are...

This paper discusses the data on U.S. intrafirm trade in goods collected in BEA's surveys of the operations of U.S. multinational firms and foreign-owned U.S. affiliates. It also examines patterns that emerge from the data, with a particular focus on the intrafirm-trade shares of U.S. exports...

This paper presents summary information on U.S.-located MNEs that engage in both R&D and international trade in selected innovation-related services (charges for IP and R&D services), based on a microdata link of several U.S. economic and R&D surveys. Aggregate linked data suggest that MNEs that...

Some foreign investment represents domestic funds that have been sent abroad before returning to the domestic economy, called round-tripping. Traditional FDI statistics do not distinguish round-tripping from genuine foreign investment. This Perspective argues for countries to produce statistics...

Divestments are a frequent yet understudied corporate phenomenon. The authors outline key findings on the drivers of divestment by multinational enterprises using a large firm-level dataset and call for further research and a more explicit focus on divestments in data collection and policy-making.

This paper presents estimates of the carbon emissions of FDI from capital formation funded by FDI and the production of foreign-controlled firms. The carbon intensity of capital formation financed by FDI has trended down, driven by reductions in the carbon intensity of electricity generation....

FDI plays a central role in managing global production networks, but FDI statistics also reflect other factors, including tax avoidance, that make it difficult to differentiate between FDI for “long-term” investments that serves as a source of growth and FDI that is purely financial and has...