Power in the multinational corporation in industry equilibrium

Recent theories of the multinational corporation introduce the property rights model of the firm and examine whether to integrate or outsource firm activities locally or to a foreign country. This paper focuses instead on the internal organization of the multinational corporation by examining the power allocation between headquarters and subsidiaries. We provide a framework to analyse the interaction between the decision to serve the local market by exporting or FDI, market access and the optimal mode of organization of the multinational corporation. We find that subsidiary managers are given decision power to run the firm at intermediate levels of host country competition. We then provide comparative statics on the optimal organization of the multinational corporation for changes in fixed FDI entry costs, trade costs, as well as changes in information technology.      

Welfare effects of competition for FDI between technologically asymmetric countries with varying trade costs

Given the traditional argument that host countries' excessive competition for FDI (foreign direct investment) deteriorates the host countries' welfare, this paper examines the impact of policy competition for FDI on social welfare considering varying trade costs. Based on a model where two technologically asymmetric countries compete for FDI, we determine an equilibrium where a multinational firm relocates to a less efficient country. Moreover, we demonstrate that the policy competition for FDI between less integrated economies might improve social welfare when the multinational firm relocates to a country with a lower technology and a less competitive market. Nonetheless, we show that the traditional argument can be true when the policy competition for FDI between highly integrated economies deteriorates host countries' welfare, as supported by the empirical evidences of moderated competition for FDI within EU member countries.     

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.     

Foreign market entry,upstream market power,and endogenous mode of downstream competition

In a differentiated duopoly model of trade and FDI featuring both horizontal and vertical product differentiation, we examine whether globalization and trade policy measures can generate welfare gains by leading firms to change their mode of competition. We show that when a high-quality foreign variety is manufactured under large frictions due to upstream monopoly power, a foreign firm can become a Bertrand competitor against a Cournot local rival in equilibrium, especially when the relative product quality of the foreign variety is sufficiently high and trade costs are sufficiently low (implying higher input price distortions due to double marginalization). Our results suggest that such strategic asymmetry is welfare improving and that the availability of FDI as an alternative to trade can make welfare-enhancing strategic asymmetry even more likely, especially when both input trade costs and fixed investment costs are sufficiently low and trade costs in final goods are sufficiently large.     

The Vertical Multinational Enterprise and International Trade

This paper analyzes an endogenous vertical multinational enterprise by explicitly modeling a distortion in the intermediate goods sector. Firms invest abroad to lower the cost of multistage production. The implications for international trade and investment differ markedly from the conventional wisdom of multinationals. Particularly, intrafirm trade in intermediates implies vertical investment complements rather than substitutes for trade. The decision to become a multinational depends on the level on foreign factor prices, the nature of the competition with foreign suppliers, transport, tariffs, and subsidiary plant costs. Marginal change in tariff may result in unintended welfare jumps as firm configuration shifts.     

Trade, Multinational Sales, and FDI in a Three-factor Model

The overwhelming importance of multinational activities as well as the coexistence of exporters and multinationals within the developed countries demand for theoretical models which provide a convincing explanation of simultaneous two‐way trade and horizontal multinational activities. We present a model with three factors of production to disentangle the two‐fold role of headquarters for their affiliates into a know‐how (headquarters services) and a capital‐serving part (FDI). We simulate the model to derive predictions about the impact of trade costs, plant set‐up costs, fixed multinational network costs, relative country size and factor endowments on exports, multinational sales and FDI. The effects are not uniform for multinational sales and FDI. Whereas exports and affiliate sales increase with the similarity in country size, FDI is more likely to increase monotonously with the sending country's size.     

Infrastructure,Multinational Affiliate Production,and the Pattern of Trade

In a two-country general equilibrium model with endogenously determined domestic and multinational firms, it is shown that public infrastructure development can have diverging implications for horizontal multinational affiliate firm production and trade, depending on the type of infrastructure invested in. Infrastructure investments with strong productive or local transport effects (i.e. schools or local roads) lead to greater domestic firm production and exports, fewer imports, and more foreign multinational affiliate firm production in the country making the investment. On the other hand, infrastructure projects that lower international trade and transaction costs (i.e. shipping ports or airports) lead to more domestic firms in both countries, a greater volume of bilateral exports in both directions, and less multinational affiliate production. Further, the effect of different types of infrastructure investment on income and welfare of the open economies is explored.     

Measurement and Modeling of the Economic Effects of Trade and Investment Barriers in Services

In this paper, the authors adapt the latest version of the Michigan Model of World Production and Trade to incorporate cross-border services trade and foreign direct investment (FDI). Firms are taken to be monopolistically competitive. Each firm produces products differentiated by the original R&D that defines the basic product and by location of production. Each firm faces a fixed cost in the country where production occurs, and sets an optimal mark-up for sales from each location. Firms locate production for export or for local consumption depending on the type of barriers faced. Barriers to trade in services take the form of an additional cost of employing variable capital and labor. The paper reports the impact on welfare, trade, factor prices, sectoral output, economies of scale, and activities of multinationals following the introduction of national treatment of multinational firms in all countries.     

Commercial Policy and Foreign Ownership

Foreign multinationals often not only export but also control local firms through FDI. This paper examines the various effects of trade and industrial policies when exports and FDI coexist. We focus on the case in which a foreign firm has full control of a local firm through partial ownership. Cross‐border ownership on the basis of both financial interests and corporate control leads to horizontal market linkages through which tariffs and production subsidies may harm locally owned firms but benefit the foreign firm. Foreign ownership regulation benefits locally owned firms. These results could have strong policy implications for developing countries that attract an increasing share of world FDI.     

Optimum tariffs and patent length in a model of North–South technology transfer

We study a developing country's choice of optimum tariffs and patent length in a theoretical model of trade and technology transfer. A Northern firm chooses whether to export or produce a new good in a Southern country. In the absence of patent protection, a high tariff is required to induce FDI. This reduces Southern welfare when the good is imported. The Southern government can combine a positive patent length with tariffs to reduce this loss and induce FDI. Thus Southern countries may have an incentive to protect patents, although never to the same extent as Northern countries.     

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.     

Market access and technology adoption in the presence of FDI

This paper theoretically investigates whether improved access to the domestic market speeds up new technology adoption by foreign firms. Foreign firms choose between exporting and foreign direct investment (FDI) to serve the domestic market. If two firms compete in the domestic market, multilateral liberalization of FDI or the realization of multilateral free trade may deter or delay technology adoption, while they always promote and accelerate technology adoption if only a single firm serves the domestic market. Technology adoption can be quickest and consumer welfare greatest when the fixed cost of FDI and the trade costs are neither very high nor very low. Preferential liberalization of FDI promotes the technology adoption of the targeted firm but may not benefit consumers because it discourages technology adoption of the non-targeted firm.     

Uncertain Productivity Growth and the Choice between FDI and Export

While determinants of FDI patterns have received widespread attention, the timing of their surge remains largely unexplained. According to the proximity–concentration trade‐off argument, a surge in FDI in times of decaying international transportation costs seemingly represents a paradox. Besides transportation costs, other factors have contextually changed: in particular, the uncertainty that firms bear has increased. Enriching the classical choice problem of a multinational firm with insights from the literature on investment under uncertainty, we illustrate how different types of uncertainty determine the timing and optimal entry mode (i.e. FDI or export) of a multinational enterprise into a new market.     

Trade liberalization in a differentiated duopoly reconsidered

Constructing a model of differentiated Cournot duopoly, we consider welfare effects of trade liberalization (i.e. reductions in transport costs). We examine both multilateral trade (i.e. the firms in both countries export bilaterally) and unilateral trade, under which foreign entry is possible but the home firm cannot export. Some new results on trade gains under differentiated oligopoly are proved and their implications are discussed.     

FDI Policy,Greenfield Investment and Cross‐border Mergers

This paper examines a multinational's choice between greenfield investment and cross‐border merger when it enters another country via foreign direct investment (FDI) and faces the host country's FDI policy. Greenfield investment incurs a fixed plant setup cost, whereas the foreign firm obtains only a share of the joint profit from a cross‐border merger under the restriction of the FDI policy. This trade‐off is affected by market demand, cost differential, and market competition, among other things. The host country's government chooses its FDI policy to affect (or alter) the multinational's entry mode to achieve the maximum social welfare for the domestic country. We characterize the conditions shaping the optimal FDI policy and offer intuitions on FDI patterns in developing and developed countries.     

Regional Blocs and Foreign Direct Investment

The paper examines the impact of the emergence of regional blocs on the patterns of interbloc and intrabloc trade when firms have the option to engage in foreign direct investment (FDI). For exogenously given external tariffs, when firms have the option to engage in FDI, all interbloc trade may cease—complete trade diversion that is replaced by interbloc FDI investment creation. In such an event the volume of world trade declines but this is more than offset by the increase in world output due to direct investment. The paper also investigates the optimal tariff that a trading bloc levies on imports from nonmember countries. The tariffs are restricted by the option to engage in two‐way direct investment; hence, the regional blocs are hampered from mutually harming one another through an escalation in the tariff war. Finally, the formation of two regional blocs enhances the welfare of all countries.     

National Border Effects: Location, Not Nationality, Matters

A recent literature documents the downward impact of national borders on trade. This paper probes the relative importance of two potential sources of border effects: (1) pure locational factors, such as transport costs and tariffs; and (2) an inherent disadvantage for a firm selling in a foreign market. I am able to make this decomposition by using data on the local sales of foreign affiliates of US multinational enterprises, on US bilateral exports, and on domestic sales by host‐country firms. The “border effect” arises almost entirely from locational factors. If a firm establishes and sells from a subsidiary located in the foreign country, its local sales are about on a par with those of domestic firms in that market.     

FOREIGN DIRECT INVESTMENT IN A TWO‐TIER OLIGOPOLY: COORDINATION,VERTICAL INTEGRATION,AND WELFARE*

We study foreign direct investment (FDI) by two independent investors/entrants into a two‐tiered oligopolistic industry. An FDI subsidy at a single stage of production can be sufficient to resolve the coordination problem facing investors thereby inducing entry at both stages. However, due to linkage offsetting, FDI at both stages may yield lower domestic welfare than FDI at a single stage. Vertical integration not only solves the coordination problem, it also eliminates double marginalization. But since the integrated multinational does not sell the intermediate to local firms, its entry generates no vertical linkages and can yield lower welfare than FDI by independent firms.     

Export,FDI and the welfare gains from trade liberalization

This paper extends Melitz and Redding (2015) to analyze the welfare gains from trade liberalization by adding foreign direct investment(FDI). Our model predicts that with FDI activities, welfare gains from trade liberalization will be strictly lower than those in a model without FDI, but only takes exports into account. In addition, the calibrated model indicates that with FDI activities, aggregate welfare reaches its maximum when the fixed export costs are positive rather than 0. Furthermore, we decompose the welfare gains induced by trade liberalization from continuing exporters, and switchers. The results show that in any case, with or without FDI, continuing exporters contribute a larger share to welfare gains than status switching firms.     

Tax competition for foreign direct investments and the nature of the incumbent firm

We investigate tax/subsidy competition for foreign direct investments (FDI) between countries of different size when a domestic firm is the incumbent in the largest market and we study how the nature (public or private) of the incumbent firm affects policy competition. We show that, differently from the case of a private firm, the country hosting the incumbent always benefits from FDI if the domestic firm is a public welfare‐maximizing firm. We also show that the public firm acts as a disciplinary device for the foreign multinational that will always choose the efficient welfare‐maximizing location. An efficiency‐enhancing role of policy competition may then arise only when the domestic incumbent is a private firm, whereas tax competition is always wasteful in the presence of a public firm.