Should countries block foreign takeovers of R&D champions and promote greenfield entry?

Abstract In R&D intensive industries, governments promote greenfield foreign investments, while being sceptical towards foreign acquisitions of domestic high‐quality firms. We develop a theoretical model that shows that foreign acquisitions are conducive to high‐quality targets because of strategic effects on the sales price. However, foreign firms ‘cherry pick’ high‐quality targets to expand R&D rather than to downsize. Otherwise, rivals expand R&D, making the acquisition unprofitable. Thus, our model predicts that acquired affiliates invest more in R&D than greenfield affiliates. Using affiliate data, we find evidence that acquired affiliates have a higher level of sequential R&D intensity than greenfield affiliates.     

Investment Liberalization and Cross‐Border Acquisitions: The Effect of Partial Foreign Ownership

This paper investigates the optimal strategy for a multinational to conduct FDI. We find that the incentives to use acquisition rather than greenfield investment change significantly if the multinational is allowed to have already an ownership interest in the target local firm before the market is fully liberalized. Interestingly, when investment costs are sufficiently high, the multinational prefers not entering the market at all with partial ownership in place, whereas a cross‐border takeover would be the optimal entry mode otherwise. For intermediate levels of entry costs, holding a stake in the local producer reverses positively the profitability of a full acquisition compared to greenfield investment.     

Multinationals,cross‐border acquisitions and wage dispersion

Abstract We examine the impact of cross‐border acquisitions on intra‐firm wage dispersion using a detailed Swedish linked employer‐employee data set including data on all firms and about 50% of the Swedish labour force with information on job‐tasks and education. Foreign acquisitions of domestic multinationals and local firms increase wage dispersion but so do also other types of cross‐border acquisitions. Hence, it is the acquisition itself rather than foreign ownership that increases wage dispersion. The positive wage effect is concentrated to CEOs and other managers, whereas other groups are either negatively affected or not affected at all.     

The effects of cross‐border M&As on the acquirers’ domestic performance: firm‐level evidence

Abstract This paper provides empirical evidence on the effects of cross‐border mergers and acquisitions (M&As) on the acquiring firms’ domestic performance in the U.K. and France. We build a new firm‐level data set that combines a global M&A database with balance sheet data for the years 2000 to 2007. Combining matching techniques with a difference‐in‐differences estimator, we find that cross‐border M&As boost on average acquirers’ domestic sales and investment, and they are not accompanied by a downsizing of the domestic labour force in either country. Further, cross‐border M&As in knowledge‐intensive industries lead to improvements in domestic productivity. Our results display some heterogeneity across industries and types of acquisitions, suggesting a connection between the motives for international M&As and their resulting effects.     

The impact of multinational entry on domestic market structure and investment

We model the impact of different modes of multinational entry on the choices of domestic firms. Focusing on the competitive effects of foreign entry for the host country we demonstrate that greenfield investment will increase competition only if it is not countered by anti-competitive reactions on the part of the domestic firms. Together with cross-border mergers and acquisitions the model, thus, provides two alternative explanations for the increase in concentration ratios in industries with mostly horizontal foreign direct investment. Moreover, foreign presence is shown to raise total investment in the local industry at the cost of crowding out domestic investment.     

An Assignment Theory of Foreign Direct Investment

We develop an assignment theory to analyse the volume and composition of foreign direct investment (FDI). Firms conduct FDI by either engaging in greenfield investment or in cross-border acquisitions. Cross-border acquisitions involve firms trading heterogeneous corporate assets to exploit complementarities, while greenfield FDI involves setting up a new production division in the foreign country. In equilibrium, greenfield FDI and cross-border acquisitions coexist within the same industry, but the composition of FDI between these modes varies with firm and country characteristics. Firms engaging in greenfield investment are systematically more efficient than those engaging in cross-border acquisitions. Furthermore, most FDI takes the form of cross-border acquisitions when production-cost differences between countries are small, while greenfield investment plays a more important role for FDI from high-cost into low-cost countries. These results capture important features of the data.     

Physical capital,knowledge capital,and the choice between FDI and outsourcing

Abstract There exist two approaches in the literature concerning the multinational firm’s mode choice for foreign production between an owned subsidiary and a licensing contract. One approach considers environments where the firm transfers primarily knowledge‐based assets and assumes that knowledge is non‐excludable. A more recent approach takes the property‐right view of the firm and assumes that physical capital is fully excludable. This paper combines both forms of capital assets in a single model. There are subtleties, and added structure is needed to establish what ex ante seems a straightforward testable hypothesis: relatively physical‐capital‐intensive firms choose outsourcing while relatively knowledge‐capital‐intensive firms choose FDI.     

The choice of market entry mode: Greenfield investment,M&A and joint venture

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 of potential acquisition targets and joint venture partners. In particular, even if greenfield investment is a viable option, the multinational may prefer a joint venture to M&A, and M&A to greenfield investment, provided that M&A and joint venture both involve sufficiently low fixed costs. The reason is that the profitability of greenfield investment both reduces the acquisition price in the case of M&A, and gives local firms an incentive to agree to a joint venture.     

Foreign direct investment and host country policies: A rationale for using ownership restrictions

This paper examines host governments' motivation for restricting ownership shares of multinational firms (MNFs) in foreign direct investment (FDI) projects. An MNF with a productivity advantage is willing to invest in a host country. The host government wants to capture the MNF's surplus yet cannot observe it due to the MNF's private information about its firm-specific advantage. In contrast, a joint venture (JV) partner might observe this surplus depending on its ownership share. The host government can alleviate its informational constraints by using ownership restrictions to force a JV. This calls into question the wisdom of calls for ‘liberalizing’ FDI flows by the wholesale elimination of domestic JV requirements. We show that the optimal mechanism involves ownership restrictions that decrease as the size of the MNF's firm-specific advantage increases.     

WHO GAINS FROM WHOM? SPILLOVERS,COMPETITION AND TECHNOLOGY SOURCING IN THE FOREIGN‐OWNED SECTOR OF UK MANUFACTURING

There is a growing literature explaining foreign direct investment flows in terms of ‘technology sourcing’, whereby multinational firms invest in certain locations not to exploit their firm‐specific assets in the host environment, but to access technology that is generated by host country firms. However, it is far from clear whether the literature has found significant evidence of such activity beyond a few isolated examples. This paper extends this work by allowing for the possibility of multinational enterprises (MNEs) sourcing technology not only from host country firms but also from each other within a host economy. The paper demonstrates that MNEs in the UK do indeed appropriate spillovers both from indigenous firms and from other foreign investors, but that there are also significant competition effects that act to reduce productivity in certain industries. The paper also explores which countries' affiliates gain most from technology sourcing in the UK, and which generate the greatest spillovers within the foreign‐owned sector.     

TAXING FOREIGN PROFITS WITH INTERNATIONAL MERGERS AND ACQUISITIONS*

A large part of border crossing investment takes the form of international mergers and acquisitions. In this article, we ask how optimal repatriation tax systems look like in a world where investment involves a change of ownership, instead of a reallocation of real capital. We find that the standard results of international taxation do not carry over to the case of international mergers and acquisitions. The deduction system is no longer optimal from a national perspective and the foreign tax credit system fails to ensure global optimality. The tax exemption system is optimal if ownership advantage is a public good within the multinational firm. However, the cross‐border cash‐flow tax system dominates the exemption system in terms of optimality properties.     

Does policy reform promote FDI in developing economies? a firm-level simulation approach

How do policy reforms for foreign investors in developing economies affect inward foreign direct investment? Using a firm heterogeneity model calibrated to match data on Japanese multinational firms, we simulate how multinationals respond to a decline in investment procedure days. We find that such policy reforms in investment procedures significantly increase the aggregate entries and sales of multinational firms in developing economies, with the more pronounced impact at the extensive margin than at the intensive margin. At the firm level, declining entry costs encourage more productive firms to invest in a wider range of markets although such impacts are modest for the most productive firms that already penetrate many markets. The impacts on foreign sales per multinational firm are less clear-cut in magnitude across productivity levels in part because falling entry costs directly increase multinational entry to developing economies, but only indirectly encourage their existing production in these markets.     

Intellectual Property Rights and Entry into a Foreign Market: FDI versus Joint Ventures

We study the effect of the intellectual property rights (IPR) regime of a host country (South) on a multinational's decision between serving a market via greenfield foreign direct investment to avoid the exposure of its technology or a North–South joint venture (JV) with a local firm, which allows R&D spillovers under imperfect IPRs. JV is the equilibrium market structure when R&D intensity is moderate and IPRs strong. The South can gain from increased IPR protection because it encourages a JV, whereas policies to limit foreign ownership in a JV gain importance in technology‐intensive industries as complementary policies to strong IPRs.     

Foreign direct investment,input prices,and host country welfare

This paper analyzes a multinational firm’s foreign direct investment decision, through either greenfield investment or cross‐border merger and acquisition, into a host country with an input monopoly that adopts either uniform pricing or discriminatory pricing. The optimal foreign entry mode could differ under each pricing policy. Under Cournot competition, firms’ technological gap and the initial local market structure are critical to the choice of foreign entry mode, whereas product substitutability is important under Bertrand competition. In the presence of foreign entry, this paper also examines the welfare effects of input price discrimination for the host country.     

FOREIGN ENTRY INTO U.S. SERVICE INDUSTRY BY TAKEOVERS AND THE CREATION OF NEW FIRMS

We study the relation between foreign entry in U.S. service sector industries and the revealed comparative advantage of the investing country using U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis firm‐level data on all foreign takeovers and new foreign‐owned firms from 1998 to 2008. We find foreign acquisitions in the service sector are in industries of U.S. comparative advantage while new foreign firms are in industries of investing country's comparative advantage. This suggests that foreign acquisitions in the service sector are not directly related to foreign investors' competitiveness in the industry of investment. In contrast foreign investors in new service sector firms come from countries with a competitive edge in the industries of investment. We also find that foreign investors of new service sector firms are from Organization for Economic Co‐operation and Development (OECD) countries with a comparative disadvantage in royalties and trademarks. (JEL F21, F23, G34)     

Cross‐border Mergers and Greenfield Foreign Direct Investment

This paper presents a model of international trade and foreign direct investment (FDI), where FDI is comprised of greenfield FDI and mergers and acquisitions (M&A). In a monopolistically competitive environment merging firms do not reduce competition. Mergers are motivated by efficiency gains and transfer of technology. Following empirical evidence, greenfield investors are modeled as more productive than M&A firms, which are in turn more productive than exporters. The model has two symmetric countries and generates two‐way flows of both M&A and greenfield FDI. Trade liberalization makes more firms choose greenfield FDI over M&A and leads to lower productivity and welfare.     

Bargaining with Rent Seekers

Consider a rent‐seeking game, which has government bargain with firms over dividing the rents. In period 1, each firm can invest to increase the probability that the rent will appear. In period 2, the parties bargain. In equilibrium, though firms will invest more than the socially optimal level, rent‐seeking expenditures may be low. Firms that collude to restrict investment maximize joint profits by investing at a positive, non‐infinitesimal level, and restrict investment even if the cost of rent‐seeking effort is zero.     

How Does the Minimum Wage Affect Firm Investments in Fixed and Human Capital? Evidence from China

This paper empirically analyzes the impact of Chinese minimum wage regulations on the firm decision to invest in physical and human capital. We exploit the geographical and inter‐temporal variations of county‐level minimum wages in a panel data set of all state‐owned and all above‐scale non‐state‐owned Chinese firms covering the introduction of the new Chinese minimum wage regulations in 2004. In our basic regressions including all Chinese firms, we find significant negative effects of the minimum wage on human capital investment rates and no overall effects on fixed capital investment rates. When grouping firms by their ownership structure, we find that these results hold for most firms. Foreign‐owned firms are an exception to some extent, because the likelihood that they invest in human capital has not decreased in response to the policy.     

INTERNATIONALIZATION STRATEGIES IN OLIGOPOLY WITH HETEROGENEOUS FIRMS

This paper examines the foreign direct investment (FDI) versus exports decision of foreign oligopolistic firms under cost heterogeneity. An additional motivation for firms to invest abroad is the technological sourcing via spillovers, which flow from the host more efficient firm to foreign less advantaged firms. For intermediate values of the set‐up costs associated with FDI entry, it is shown that foreign firms choose opposite entry strategies. An equilibrium where the less efficient foreign firm exports whereas the more efficient invests is more likely to happen when foreign firms become more heterogeneous, the larger the trade costs and not too big oligopolistic profitability. Interestingly, the opposite may also be an equilibrium thus finding that the more efficient firm does not choose to invest, a result that emphasizes the relevance of the strategic setting under consideration. The latter result identifies a market failure since welfare in the host market is higher when both firms undertake FDI; a finding that calls attention to how appropriate are host government policies towards internationalization strategies.     

Technological Constraints,Firm Heterogeneity,and Location Choice of Multinational Enterprises

This paper aims to examine the relationship between the location choices of multinational enterprises and their productivity considering the North–South differences in regard to technological constraints. We find that home firms with the highest level of productivity choose to undertake foreign direct investment (FDI) in the developed countries and they choose to export to, rather than do FDI in, developing countries. This result explains why not many high tech industries exist in developing countries. Using Japanese firm level data, we also confirm that Japanese high tech firms tend to undertake FDI in developed countries, but hesitate to invest in developing countries empirically.