A developing country may attract foreign direct investment (FDI) for (1) technology transfer that increases local firm profits or for (2) wage premiums that benefit workers. The two never occur together but if the country can attract FDI, it is guaranteed either the technology transfer or the...

We construct an oligopoly model in which a multinational firm has a superior technology compared to local firms. Workers employed by the multinational acquire knowledge of its superior technology. The multinational may pay a wage premium to prevent local firms from hiring its workers and thus...

The paper examines possible reasons behind expanded outsourcing by modeling outsourcing decisions when intellectual property rights are imperfectly protected. Firms in the North develop higher quality levels of existing products and then decide whether to shift some stages of production to the...

'Top-of-the-line PCs and servers ... tend to be purchased by early adopters, technophiles who just can't wait' (Fortune, February 17, 1997). This paper constructs a model of quality improvements where multiple quality levels can sell due to differences in consumers' valuations of quality. Firms...

The authors construct an oligopoly model in which a multinational firm has a technology superior to those of local firms in the host country. Workers employed by the multinational acquire knowledge of the superior technology and can spread their knowledge to local firms by switching employers....

We analyze optimal host country policy toward multinational production in a three country model. Oligopolists from two source countries invest in a common host country to take advantage of low costs. The country with the smallest labor supply per firm has the highest wage in the absence of...

Internalization advantage determines whether firms use foreign direct investment (FDI) or licensing to serve markets abroad. We determine how innovation affects the incentives for internalization and how internalization in turn affects the incentives for innovation. Bigger innovations are kept...

Oligopolists from two source countries invest in a common host country to take advantage of low costs. A selective subsidy to multinational production encourages foreign direct investment (FDI) from the favored country but crowds out FDI from the other source. Such a subsidy also shifts rents...

We study the impact of foreign direct investment (FDI) policies when source firms locate some production in two host countries. By reducing its tax on multinational production, a host country can attract additional FDI, some of which is diverted from other host countries. The shift in FDI causes...

We construct an oligopoly model in which a multinational firm has a superior technology compared to local firms in the host country. Workers employed by the multinational acquire knowledge of its superior technology and can spread their knowledge to host firms by switching employers. The...