We estimate international technology spillovers to US manufacturing firms via imports and foreign direct investment (FDI) between the years 1987-96. In contrast to earlier work, our results suggest that FDI leads to significant productivity gains for domestic firms. The size of FDI spillovers is...

We explore entry into a foreign market with uncertain demand growth. A multinational can serve the foreign demand in two ways, or by a combination thereof: it can export its product, or it can create productive capacity via Foreign Direct Investment. The advantage of FDI is that it allows lower...

Using a panel dataset containing information on FDI flows from market to transition economies, we establish the determinants of FDI inflows to Central and Eastern Europe: country risk, unit labour costs, host market size and gravity factors. In turn, we find country risk to be influenced by...

The standard argument says that in the presence of positive spillovers foreign direct investment should be promoted and subsidized. In contrast, this Paper claims that the very existence of such spillovers may require temporarily restricting and taxing inward FDI. Our argument in favour of...

Are there productivity spillovers from FDI to domestic firms, and, if so, how much should host countries be willing to pay to attract FDI? To examine these questions we use a plant-level panel covering UK manufacturing from 1973 through 1992. Across a wide range of specifications, we estimate a...

This paper presents evidence of profit shifting in response to differences in corporate tax rates for a large selection of OECD countries. In our estimates we control for the effects of tax rate changes on real activity. Our baseline estimates suggest that, on average, a unilateral increase in...

The recent media and political attention on service outsourcing from developed to developing countries gives the impression that outsourcing is exploding. As a result, workers in industrial countries are anxious about job losses. This Paper aims to establish what are the hypes and what are the...

What determines sovereign risk? We study the London bond market from the 1870s to the 1930s. Our findings support conventional wisdom concerning the limited credibility of the interwar gold standard. Before 1914, gold standard adherence effectively signalled credibility and shaved 40 to 60 basis...

Convergence in per capita income turns on whether technological knowledge spillovers are global or local. Global spillovers favour convergence, while a geographically limited scope of knowledge diffusion can lead to regional clusters of countries with persistently different levels of income per...

This Paper analyses the tax competition and tax exporting effect of financial integration. On the one hand, financial integration increases capital mobility and thus the incentive for countries to compete for capital. On the other hand, financial integration increases foreign ownership of firms...