Multinationals and Training: Some Evidence from Irish Manufacturing Industries

This paper sets out to analyse the effect of plant and sectoral level characteristics on the provision of training to employees using plant level data for Irish manufacturing. There is no clear evidence that foreign owned plants are more likely to provide training. By contrast, we find that they spend less than domestic plants on training, ceteris paribus. There is also no evidence that plants that receive training grants are more likely to provide training. This may be likely to reflect the targeting of training grants on plants that are otherwise unlikely to provide much training. We do, however, find that training activity in the sector, either by other foreign or domestic plants, has a positive effect on plant level training activity, at least for domestic owned plants.     

出口导向、技术类型与跨国公司内部技术转移——基于在华日资企业的实证分析

FDI的技术溢出效应受到了广泛关注,但对作为"溢出源头"的跨国公司内部技术转移的研究却并不充分.文章通过对日本在华制造业企业的问卷调查数据,将母公司转移的技术分为生产制造技术和生产作业方式两种类型,从微观视角考察了不同目标市场的出口导向对跨国公司技术转移的影响.研究发现:(1)面向日本市场的出口对生产制造技术转移具有显著的正向效应,而对生产作业方式转移则没有直接影响,但存在出口通过生产制造技术的转移促进生产作业方式转移的间接效应;(2)面向其他国家的出口对两类技术转移均没有显著的影响;(3)母公司的控股程度、国际化经验和研发水平以及子公司的本土研发、员工培训等因素对技术转移也具有影响.文章为我国如何提高外商直接投资的技术溢出效应提供了启示.     

Multinationals and the gains from international diversification

This paper employs mean–variance spanning tests to examine the diversification potential of multinational firms and foreign market indices from the perspective of investors in the G7 countries over the 1984–1995 period. We find evidence that multinational corporations may have provided diversification benefits for investors in Germany and the United States. We find that the addition of foreign market indices to a domestic portfolio—inclusive of multinationals—provided substantial diversification benefits in all countries. The economic importance of the shift of the portfolio frontier varied considerably across markets.     

Foreign direct investment in services and manufacturing productivity: Evidence for Chile

This paper examines the impact of substantial foreign direct investment (FDI) inflows in producer service sectors on the total factor productivity (TFP) of Chilean manufacturing firms. Positive effects are obtained in firm fixed effects instrumental variables regressions and show that forward linkages from FDI in services explain 7% of the observed increase in Chile's manufacturing users' TFP. Our findings also suggest that service FDI fosters innovation activities in manufacturing. Moreover, we show that service FDI offers opportunities for laggard firms to catch up with industry leaders.     

Swedish Multinationals and Competition from High- and Low-Wage Locations

This study uses data on Swedish multinationals to estimate cross-elasticities of labor demand in different locations. With a vertical decomposition of the firm's activities, whether there is substitution or complementarity between employment in different parts of the firm will depend on whether wage changes lead to a relocation of activities or simply to changes in marginal costs and/or demand for inputs in other parts of the firms. It is found that there is some evidence of a substitutionary relationship between employment in the Swedish parts of the firms and employment in other high-income locations, but no evidence of substitution stemming from employment in low-income locations.     

The impacts of China on economic growth: Evidence for Brazil,Chile, and Peru

This study empirically analyzes the direct impacts derived from the swift increase in exports to China (referred to as “the impact of China”) on the economic growth of three selected South American countries, Brazil, Chile, and Peru, during the commodity boom between 2001 and 2008. The results stemming from the balance-of-payments-constrained growth model suggest that the magnitude of China’s impact was less than 1 percent, although it ranged from the largest to the second largest impact among all trading partners for the three countries. The estimated balance-of-payments growth rate of domestic income is lower than the real growth rate of domestic income. This is because the growth rates of the export volumes were not sufficient even during the commodity boom, on account of the continued increasing trends of income elasticity of demand for imports. Furthermore, the income elasticities of demand for imports from China were especially high. Therefore, the three countries will continue to face further increase in the income elasticity of demand for imports as well as a stagnant growth rate of export volumes. Thus, the balance-of-payments position will continue to be the main growth constraint for these countries.     

Externalities from Intra-Firm Trade by U.S. Multinationals

International Advances in Economic Research - The share of world trade attributed to intra-firm trade is large and fast-growing. This paper offers new information on the welfare outcome of these...     

Economic reforms and labour markets: policy issues and lessons from Chile

Over the last twenty years sweeping reforms have deeply transformed the labour market in Chile. A visible outcome has been the reduction of Chile's rate of unemployment from 'European' to 'US' levels. Even though the political context makes this experiment special, are there economic lessons to be learnt? This paper concentrates on reforms to job security, on the decentralization of the wage bargaining process, and on the reduction in payroll taxes. It concludes that the reduction of payroll taxes (within the context of the social security reform), and the decentralization of bargaining increased labour market flexibility and contributed to the reduction of unemployment. On the other side, the analysis suggests that the reform on job security had no significant effect on the aggregate rate of unemployment.     

Taxes and Decision Rights in Multinationals

We examine how a multinational's choice to centralize or decentralize its decision structure is affected by country tax differentials. Within a simple model that emphasizes the multiple conflicting roles of transfer prices in multinational enterprises (MNEs)—here, as a strategic precommitment device and a tax manipulation instrument—we show that centralization is more profitable when tax differentials are large. When tax differentials are small, decentralization can be performed in two different ways each providing the highest profits in a particular range of the tax differential. Hence, the paper emphasizes the organizational flexibility that MNEs have in pursuing tax optimization.     

Revolving doors: entrepreneurial survival and exit

The high turbulence of new entrepreneurial ventures that are rapidly selected out at the fringe of the firm population has been emphasized using the ??revolving doors?? metaphor. However, well-planned exit strategies can be the root of entrepreneurial success and a mechanism to transfer novelty to established firms. The aim of this Special Issue is to highlight the multiple aspects of exit as part of the entrepreneurial process.     

外包与生产率:基于工业行业数据的经验研究

本文使用投入产出表的数据计算了我国35个工业行业的外包比率,并以面板数据模型检验了外包对全员劳动生产率的影响;为验证其中的机理,进一步检验了外包对就业以及产出的影响。检验结果表明,当企业把原本自制的但属于其它产业的中间投入品外包出去,将会提高企业的劳动生产率。原因是,外包产生了资本节约型的技术进步;外包在提高劳动生产率的同时,对就业并没有产生负面影响,原因是规模效应抵消了替代效应。正因为这两点,外包对产出的影响可以概括为两个方面:一是促进生产可能性前沿向外移动,是生产边界的推动器;二是导致生产结构从劳动密集型向资本密集型转变,是产品结构升级的转换器。     

Credit channel and flight to quality in emerging markets: evidence from Chile

Empirical evidence of the credit channel of monetary policy often relies on the observance of flight to quality during monetary tightening. The identification assumption is that the typically smaller firms facing financing constraints, are disproportionally affected by the stance of monetary policy. I argue that when credit constrains are widespread, as may be the case in Emerging Markets, flight to quality should not be expected during monetary contractions. Indeed, in my model, among constrained firms, those with tighter financing constraints are less responsive to monetary conditions. I find evidence supporting my model in a sample of firms from the Emerging Market of Chile.     

Ownership, exit and voice after mass privatizationEvidence from Mongolia

Exit (owners selling their shares) and voice (owners active in corporate activities) are important ingredients in the process by which mass privatization changes managerial behaviour in transition countries. We examine the structure of ownership and the extent of exit and voice in one such country, Mongolia. We document the size of ownership changes since privatization (through mergers, spin-offs, and stock sales) and examine which owners are changing in importance. We scrutinize enterprise governance, examining patterns of violations of companylaw and deviations from reasonable criteria for effective governance. We show that ownership changes and the quality of governance are correlated.
JEL classification: P11, P21, O53, H70, H20.     

Multinationals and the creation of Chinese trade linkages

Abstract.  This paper studies the relationship between multinational firm proximity and the formation of new export connections by private Chinese exporters between 1997 and 2003. The results indicate that growth in the presence of multinational firms is positively associated with the formation of new trade by local Chinese firms. Further exploration suggests that information spillovers may drive this result, as the positive association due to own-industry multinational presence is particularly strong in contexts where information improvements may be the most helpful. Thus, it appears that a growing presence of multinational firms may enhance the export capabilities of local domestic firms.     

Self-employment and Liquidity Constraints: Evidence from Finland

Using a large Finnish micro data set, I study how wealth influences the decision to become self-employed. The main result is that personal wealth increases the probability of a person becoming self-employed. This suggests the presence of liquidity constraints.
JEL classification: J 23; M 13     

Bidding and Information: Evidence from Gilt-edged Auctions

Many studies have shown that government debt auctions underprice debt compared with the secondary market. This paper corroborates this for certain forms of gilt auction by comparing the price received at auction with an almost identical parent stock in the secondary market. Although the sample is small, the parent/auction stock price comparison gives a cleaner measure than used in other studies. The paper also compares non-fungible auctions (where the auction stock differs slightly from the parent at auction and merges subsequently) with fully-fungible ones (where they are identical throughout). Significant underpricing only occurs in non-fungible auctions.