This paper studies why multinational firms often share ownership of a foreign affiliate with a local partner even in the absence of government restrictions on ownership. We show that shared ownership may arise, if (i) the partner owns assets that are potentially important for the investment...

Multinationals may enter a host market by different modes of foreign direct investment (FDI). This paper examines the choice of FDI mode, and shows that the profitability of greenfield investment influences this choice not only directly, but also indirectly since it determines the outside option...

This paper develops an oligopolistic model of international trade with heterogeneous firms and endogenous R&D to examine how trade liberalization affects firm and industry productivity, as well as social welfare. We identify four effects of trade liberalization on productivity: (i) a direct...

We use Japanese firm-level data to examine how a firm?s productivity affects its choice of foreign-market entry strategy. We study a sequence of decisions, starting with the choice between exporting and foreign direct investment (FDI). In the case of FDI, the firm faces two options: greenfield...

State-owned enterprises (SOEs) are often vertically integrated firms which operate in key industries like transport, telecommunication and power generation. They provide an infrastructure and invest in its quality. We discuss the effects of liberalization and their privatization which can be...

This paper discusses the impact of foreign direct investment (FDI) on market entry and welfare in a model of two countries and two periods. In the first period, firms enter the market as national firms, in the second period, FDI is possible. The paper demonstrates that FDI reduces market entry...

Legalized parallel trade implies that an original manufacturer cannot control a retailer in a foreign country once the latter has ordered its sales quantity and has compensated the former. This paper endogenizes the role of the retailer as an agent who has private information on the perceived...

An important puzzle in corporate taxation is that effective tax rates have fallen significantly while tax revenue has simultaneously risen in most countries. Moreover, the gross profitability of firms seems to be lower in high-tax countries, even though standard models of international...

We use Japanese microdata to examine how financial market frictions affect foreign direct investment (FDI). The Japanese land price bubble and banking trouble in the late 1980s and early 1990s serve as a quasi natural experiment to identify two possible transmission channels from financial...

We scrutinize the scope of auctions in the presence of downstream interactions and information externalities by using the topical example of a firm acquisition. We show that no mechanism exists that allows an investor to acquire a low-cost firm under incomplete information: a separating auction...