This paper examines the role of contracting institutions on a multinational firm's optimal ownership strategy. We develop a model in which both a multinational firm and its local joint venture partner can ex post engage in costly rent-seeking actions to increase their ex ante agreed upon revenue...

Located at the heart of global value chains (GVCs), intangibles are documented to have a high and rising value capture, and to depend on both agglomeration economies and global connectedness for their performance. In this paper, we study how the distinct nature of intangibles require countries...

The growth of East Asia’s intra-regional trade is driven largely by increased component trade within global electronics production networks. Data on both electronics trade and production elucidate a pattern of specialization in which upper- and middle-income countries produce sophisticated...

In this paper we argue that export data are an inadequate tool to measure a country's international competitiveness when external trade is dominated by export-processing trade. Export data de not necessarily reflect the value produced in an exporting country, but rather capture the gross value...