跨国公司行业选择与地点选择战略的相关性

行业选择和地点选择分别是跨国公司进入战略的主要论题,但现有研究缺少对两者之间是否存在相关性的分析。本文以中国FDI的“引进来”部分（IFDI）和“走出去”部分（OFDI）为倒,分析中国作为东道国引进外资时和其作为母国对外投资时在行业选择上的差异;并考虑地点选择因素,研究“走出去”的中国企业在发达国家和发展中国家的行业选择上是否存在差异,以及在中国投资的发达国家和发展中国家在行业选择上是否存在区别。通过跟踪200家外商来华投资企业和40家中国对外投资企业（118个项目）的投资产业、母国和东道国信息,运用描述统计和卡方检验得出实证结论：外商来华投资和中国对外投资在行业选择和地点选择上都存在差别;发达国家和发展中国家在华投资行业的技术含量有显著不同,即跨国公司的行业选择与地点选择存在相关性;但中国企业在对外投资中受资源寻求动机的强烈影响,其到发达国家和发展中国家进行投资时在行业选择上没有体现出差异性。     

Skill Upgrading and Production Transfer within Swedish Multinationals

This paper studies the link between production transfer within Swedish‐headquartered multinational enterprises (MNEs) in the manufacturing industry and skill upgrading in their parent companies in the 1990s. The analysis distinguishes between horizontal and vertical foreign direct investment (FDI). The increased employment share in the affiliates in non‐OECD countries (vertical FDI) has a non‐trivial, significantly positive effect on the share of skilled labor in the Swedish parents. On the other hand, the parents’ skill upgrading is unrelated to employment changes in their affiliates in other OECD countries (horizontal FDI). This is consistent with implications of the newly developed horizontal MNE models.     

Market Familiarity and the Location of South and North MNEs

We use a systematic empirical analysis of the determinants of South‐South (SS) and North‐South (NS) foreign direct investment (FDI) as a canvas to explore how multinational enterprises’ (MNEs) location decisions are shaped by better acquaintance with a foreign market resulting from bilateral ties, experience of international expansion, and knowledge of how to deal with poor governance. We find that these various aspects of market familiarity, which can interact together, are important to explain and differentiate the location behaviors of South MNEs (S‐MNEs) and North MNEs (N‐MNEs) in developing countries.     

Employment effects of foreign acquisition

This paper investigates the employment effects of foreign acquisitions in acquired firms in Swedish manufacturing during the 1990s; a period characterized by a dramatic increase in foreign ownership. We find some evidence of positive employment effects in acquired firms and it seems that the employment of skilled labor increases more than that of less-skilled labor. Our results indicate that the positive employment effects are more pronounced in acquired non-MNEs than in Swedish MNEs. Furthermore, we observe shifts in skill intensities toward higher shares of skilled labor in non-MNEs taken over by foreign MNEs, but not in acquired Swedish MNEs.     

Tax competition for foreign direct investment under information uncertainty

The relation between taxation states and foreign direct investment (FDI) has been studied from several perspectives and with states at different levels of development. Most previous studies, however, have only considered the impact of tax level on FDI volume. This paper enhances this view by assuming that multinational enterprises (MNEs) can use transfer prices systems and have investment timing flexibility. Thus, it evaluates the impact of the use of international transfer pricing systems on state policy and on the investment timings of MNEs. In uncertain business environments (with the periodic releases of news), investment can increase if MNEs delay investment decisions. This paper shows how tax differentials can attract FDI and can influence MNE behavior. The equilibrium is set in a global environment where MNEs can shift their profits between states depending on local corporate tax rates. Assuming the use of transfer pricing schemes, this paper confirms the relationship between MNE behavior and the release of business news.     

经济全球化与中国工业结构变化

理论分析显示经济全球化能通过固定资产投资、制度变迁和劳动力等因素引发中国工业结构变化。运用协整分析和ECM等方法实证检验显示长期内经济全球化增长1%将促使我国工业结构变化0.27%,固定资产投资、制度变迁和劳动力均能促进我国工业结构变化,而短期内经济全球化和劳动力可能制约工业结构变化。     

Rising mass incomes as a condition of capitalist growth. Preserving capitalism through the empowerment of labor in the past and the present

Abstract

Capitalism is market-regulated production for profit. Net profit depends on net investment spending. Net investment spending ultimately requires rising mass incomes. Both the transition to capitalism and its continued existence require social embeddedness and labor having negotiating power. Such a configuration is not an inevitable nor automatic result of history. Rather, this configuration is regularly threatened, because capitalists are not interested in preserving labor’s strength. Labor supports said configuration indirectly by the wage struggle. Where negotiating power of labor does not exist, market relations do not lead to capitalism but instead to the shedding of labor, to marginality, and to relations of rent appropriation. Today’s marginality-ridden economies of the Global South have become competitive in lines of production which are important for the leading industrial countries; however, they are competitive not on the basis of low real wages but on the basis of enhanced opportunities for currency devaluation. The tendency of wage restraint, in both the Global South and West, increases the danger of global underconsumption. There are considerable residual difficulties in bringing labor with different historical and cultural backgrounds in the West and in the South together in order to strengthen labor against international big business     

Capital Flows, Vertical Multinationals, Wage Inequality, and Welfare

Wage inequality between skilled and unskilled labor in the US and its trading partners, Mexico and Chile, has increased since 1980, while Taiwan's wage inequality has decreased since the mid‐1980s. The authors provide a new explanation for the latter, involving a rise in capital flows from Taiwan to less‐developed countries (LDCs) in the form of vertical multinationals (MNEs), and a corresponding rise in intermediate‐good exports from the MNEs to subsidiaries in LDCs. Moreover, national income in both countries definitely improves.     

我国经济发展方式非均衡特征及优化的政策选择——基于人力资本投资低水平“陷阱”视角的分析

本文以人力资本视角分析我国经济发展方式转变及促进经济可持续性的政策选择。研究表明,人力资本投资在发达国家经济增长方式转型中具有主导性的作用,而改革开放以来我国人力资本投资对经济发展的作用已经落入低水平陷阱,经济发展依赖于物质资本及低端劳动力的数量投入,人力资本与物质资本呈现非均衡特征,而且出现就业压力严峻与人力资本短缺并存的现象,物质资本与人力资本不匹配、人力资本投资结构与人才需求结构错位,以及收入分配与人力资本投资不足等问题日益凸显,经济发展可持续性受到挑战。对此,我国应明确人力资本投资对经济发展方式转变的重要作用和地位,通过增加教育投入、放宽教育准入制度及收入分配改革等渠道,实现人力资本投资的快速增长,促进经济发展方式的优化。     

Lifetime consumption and investment: Retirement and constrained borrowing

Retirement flexibility and inability to borrow against future labor income can significantly affect optimal consumption and investment. With voluntary retirement, there exists an optimal wealth-to-wage ratio threshold for retirement and human capital correlates negatively with the stock market even when wages have zero or slightly positive market risk exposure. Consequently, investors optimally invest more in the stock market than without retirement flexibility. Both consumption and portfolio choice jump at the endogenous retirement date. The inability to borrow limits hedging and reduces the value of labor income, the wealth-to-wage ratio threshold for retirement, and the stock investment.     

Do price-earnings ratios explain investment decisions better than Tobin’s q? Evidence from German firm-level data

This article tests the additional information content of price-earnings ratios, with respect to Tobin’s q, in explaining firms’ investment behaviour. While Tobin’s q describes the expected future earnings related to those projected by the book value, the price-earnings ratio compares future growth of earnings based on the projection of current earnings. In other words, a high price-earnings ratio might indicate that investors are willing to rely on future earnings growth, even though current earnings are low. By using an unbalanced panel of about 500 listed firms from Germany over the period 1987–2007, we find that including the price-earnings ratio in the investment equation does not change the explanatory power of Tobin’s q. Most notably, the price-earnings ratio exerts a positive and significant impact on investment. These results are robust to the inclusion of a measure of the firm’s internal funds and of fixed effects and also to the use of different estimators.     

Irreversible investment and Knightian uncertainty

When firms make a decision about irreversible investment, they may not have complete confidence about their perceived probability measure describing future uncertainty. They may think other probability measures perturbed from the original one are also possible. Such uncertainty, characterized by not a single probability measure but a set of probability measures, is called “Knightian uncertainty.” The effect of Knightian uncertainty on the value of irreversible investment opportunity is shown to be drastically different from that of traditional uncertainty in the form of risk. Specifically, an increase in Knightian uncertainty decreases the value of investment opportunity while an increase in risk increases it.     

A Theoretical Perspective on Multilateral Agreements on Investment*

Why do we observe some developing countries objecting to the prospect of a Multilateral Agreement on Investment (MAI), even though they have been keen to liberalize investment in preferential agreements in recent years? In this paper, we analyze the issue of MAI implementation and assess the welfare consequences of such kind of agreements. In our model, participation to MAI involves a tradeoff between less rent extraction from multinational firms (MNEs) and more abundant FDI inflows. At equilibrium, either all countries enter MAI, or all countries stay out, or only some of them enter. Coordination problems may induce multiple equilibria: the three types of equilibria may coexist. So, the implementation of MAI may depend not only on structural factors but also on the general “political climate.” When all countries join MAI, world welfare is maximized because this minimizes the hold‐up problem faced by MNEs and stimulates investment. However, in an asymmetric world, welfare gains are not guaranteed for all countries.     

基于人力资本分布方差的中国国民经济生产函数研究

由于存在劳动力剩余,用就业总量和反映人力资本积累规模的数量指标均难以有效解释中国经济增长。因此,本文用质量指标替代数量指标,选取全部就业人员中具有高中(含职业教育)至大学本科阶段学历者受教育水平的分布方差来测度人力资本,并构建相应的国民经济生产函数,解释中国1997—2009年间的产出增长。研究结果表明:本文提出的方法是有效的,当前中国人力资本投资的边际产出效果高于实物资本投资,职业教育的边际产出贡献高于高等教育。     

Adam Smith's “tolerable administration of justice” and the Wealth of Nations

Adam Smith argues that a country’s income depends on its labor productivity, which in turn hinges on the division of labor. But why are some countries able to take advantage of the division of labor and become rich, while others fail to do so and remain poor? Smith describes how the security of property rights, through a “tolerable administration of justice,” allows investment and exchange to take place, bringing about economic progress. Recent empirical work on economic development has supported Smith’s emphasis on a country’s political “institutions,” particularly the judiciary, in determining its national income.     

Attribution of hedge fund returns using a Kalman filter

Hedge funds offer attractive investment possibilities because they engage in investment styles and opportunity sets which – because they are different from traditional asset class funds – generate different risk exposures. Conventional wisdom holds that hedge funds add value and provide unique investment opportunities because of their ability to invest in disparate risk exposures, and via the manager’s skill in selecting stocks and timing the market. In this article, a Kalman filter is used to decompose the time series of hedge fund returns into market timing and stock selection factors to establish whether fund managers really do generate statistically significant abnormal profits. Compelling evidence supports an alternative interpretation for the market timing return constituent. This work represents the first time the Kalman filter has been used to extract a time series of the capital asset pricing model’s dynamic variables for determining return component magnitudes.     

Foreign direct investment and international trade in a continuum Ricardian trade model

We develop a continuum Ricardian trade model to capture both North–South trade and technology transfer via foreign direct investment (FDI) by multinational enterprises (MNEs). We show that there is a unique range of products produced in the South by MNEs. In the case of an infinitely elastic supply of expatriates, if the ability of Southern workers in absorbing Northern technology increases, then (a) the range of MNE production increases, (b) Northern workers's welfare and Southern workers' welfare change in opposite directions, and (c) the world aggregate welfare increases under certain conditions. We explore issues such as North–South wage gaps, FDI policies and the product cycle. We also derive results under a general supply of expatriates.     

Shouldn't Physical Capital Also Matter for Multinational Enterprise Activity?

The foreign direct investment (FDI) literature has generally failed to find strong systematic evidence of “vertical” motivations in bilateral aggregate FDI and foreign affiliate sales (FAS) data, despite recent evidence of vertical FDI in firm‐level data. Moreover, a Bayesian analysis of the empirical determinants of FDI (and FAS) flows reveals that the parent country's physical capital per worker has a strong positive effect on FDI alongside typical gravity‐equation variables; however, this variable is ignored in the knowledge‐capital (KC) model and most empirical work. We address these two puzzles by introducing relative factor endowment differences into the three‐factor, three‐country knowledge and physical capital extension of the 2 × 2 × 2 KC model. Using a numerical version of our model, we show that horizontal and vertical multinational enterprises' (MNEs') headquarters surface in different parts of the Edgeworth box relating the parent country's skilled labor share relative to its physical capital share (of the parent's and host's endowments). The key economic insight is that horizontal MNE headquarters will be relatively more abundant than vertical MNE headquarters in countries that are abundant in physical capital relative to skilled labor, because of the multi‐plant (single‐plant) structure of horizontal (vertical) MNEs—assuming plants (headquarters) use physical capital (skilled labor) relatively intensively in their setups. The theoretical relationships suggest augmenting empirical FAS gravity equations with (polynomials of) the parent's skilled labor share alongside the parent's physical capital share to explain in aggregate bilateral data the coexistence of horizontal and vertical FAS. The theoretical and empirical results shed light on the positive effect of parent's physical capital share on FAS flows, but also suggest that MNE headquarters may be prominent in parent countries with relatively high and low skilled labor shares—once physical capital is accounted for—a result not suggested by the two‐factor KC model.     

Technological capabilities accumulation and internationalization strategies of Mexican biotech firms: a multi case study from agro-food & pharma industries

ABSTRACT

In this paper our aim is to analyze the relationship between technological capabilities accumulation of Mexican biotech firms and their different types of internationalization strategies. Because of the determining effect of firms’ capital investment level, we analyzed three groups of firms: start-ups, small and medium-sized firms (SMEs) and multinational firms (MNEs). We made use of a wide range of information: The First Survey of Biotechnology Development Firms in Mexico, the systematization of 20 case studies, interviews with key persons in the industry and public sources. We confirmed the two hypotheses outlined: (i) TCA process does not follow a linear path in Mexican biotech firms and (ii) firms with lower capital investment levels exhibit a lower level of TCA and less complex internationalization strategies; while firms with higher capital investment levels are associated with higher TCA levels and more complex internationalization strategies. Biotechnology requires high levels of capital investment and these to a large extent determine the development and technological capabilities accumulation. Therefore, we suggest that a capitalization program is much needed to foster Mexican biotech firms’ TCA processes and develop internationalization strategies.     

Do domestic firms learn to export from multinationals?

Attracting inward investment is a major preoccupation of policymakers worldwide, and a wide range of instruments, including direct subventions, are deployed to attract multinational enterprises (MNEs). Intervention is predicated on the assumption that there are direct productivity spillovers associated with the presence of MNEs and the policy of attracting them is targeted at capturing these externalities. Yet robust evidence on direct spillovers is hard to find. An underexplored indirect channel for productivity spillovers is via exports. Exporting firms are more productive than nonexporting firms. Thus, if the presence of MNEs results in more indigenous firms exporting, an indirect productivity spillover will result. In this paper, we identify possible transmission mechanisms for export spillovers and test for their existence on a large panel of firms in the UK. Our results confirm positive spillover effects from MNEs on the decision to export of UK-owned firms as well as on their export propensity.