This paper examines how international flows of technological knowledge affect economic performance across industries and firms in different countries. Motivated by the large share of the world's technology investments made by firms that are active across borders, we focus on international trade...

We estimate international technology spillovers to U.S. manufacturing firms via imports and foreign direct investment (FDI) between the years of 1987 and 1996. In contrast to earlier work, our results suggest that FDI leads to significant productivity gains for domestic firms. The size of FDI...

This paper presents and tests a new model of multinational firms to explain a rich array of multinational behavior. In contrast to most approaches, here the multinational faces costs to transferring its know-how that are increasing in technological complexity. Costly technology transfer gives...

While it is well known that managers prefer in-person meetings for negotiating deals and selling their products, face-to-face communication may be particularly important for the transfer of technology because technology is best explained and demonstrated in person. This paper studies the role of...

This paper estimates the extent to which changing environmental standards have altered patterns of international investment. Our analysis goes beyond the existing literature in three ways. First, we avoid comparing regulations in different countries by using data on inward foreign direct...

The First Opium War (1840-42) was a watershed in the history of China. In its aftermath Britain and other countries forced open new ports to foreign trade through international treaties. Chinese institutions of trade were abolished and re-organized under Western management, Western legal...

This paper studies international joint ventures, where foreign direct investment is performed by a foreign and a domestic firm that together set up a new firm, the joint venture. Employing administrative data on all international joint ventures in China from 1998 to 2007--roughly a quarter of...

This paper uses a case study approach to explore the effects of NAFTA and GATT membership on innovation and trade in the Mexican soaps, detergents and surfactants (SDS) industry. Several basic findings emerge. First, the most fundamental effect of NAFTA and the GATT on the SDS industry was to...

This paper examines the effect of Wal-Mart's entry into Mexico on Mexican manufacturers of consumer goods. Guided by firm interviews that suggested substantial heterogeneity across firms in how they responded to Wal-Mart's entry, we develop a dynamic industry model in which firms decide whether...

I study knowledge spillovers, positive externalities that augment the information set of an economic agent, and reviews the evidence on such spillovers in the context of international economic transactions. Even though spillovers are by their very nature difficult to identify, over recent...