Results

Journal article

Journal of Law, Economics, and Organization:

Business groups as knowledge-based hierarchies of firms

We provide the first worldwide overview of the patterns of hierarchical differentiation across Business Groups (BGs), highlighting the coexistence of different hierarchical shapes. We show how the different shapes can ar...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Trade within multinational boundaries

Traditional theories of firm boundaries predict trade between vertically related units of the same firm. Using novel data that combine a comprehensive mapping of U.S. multinationals' production networks with their custom...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Multinational networks and trade participation

We provide a novel explanation for the dominance of multinational corporations (MNCs) in international trade: MNC affiliates face lower trade frictions in countries that belong to their parental network. Combining rich a...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Multinational firms and global innovation

This paper provides an integrated analysis of multinational companies' global production and innovation. We establish novel stylized facts using rich data on the network of production affiliates and patent activity of Ge...Read more...

External report

Foreign Direct Investment

Multinational enterprises are at the centre of policy debates in low- and middle-income countries. As some of the most productive and innovative firms in the world, which are at the core of global supply chains, multinat...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Global robots

The diffusion of automation technology raises questions about the future of work, leading to calls for policy interventions. The ongoing debate centers on the decisions made by technology adopters. In this paper, I study...Read more...

Journal article

The Economic Journal:

Globalization and conflicts: the good, the bad, and the ugly of corporations in Africa

Using a novel georeferenced datataset on the affiliates and headquarters of multinational enterprises between 2007 and 2018 together with georeferenced conflict data for the African continent, this work establishes a cau...Read more...

Journal article

Journal of Public Economics:

Organizational capacity and profit shifting

Good organizational capacity drives productivity and potential taxable profits, but may also enable multinationals (MNEs) to more efficiently re-allocate profits across tax jurisdictions, lowering actual taxable profits....Read more...

Journal article

Review of World Economics:

Curse or blessing? multinational corporations and labor market outcomes in Africa

Do multinational enterprises create local job opportunities in developing countries? We address this question in the context of Sub-Saharan Africa by combining information on domestic and foreign multinationals? affiliat...Read more...

Journal article

American Economic Journal: Microeconomics:

Technology transfer in global value chains

Global value chains create opportunities for North-South technology diffusion. This paper studies technology transfer in value chains when contracts are incomplete and input production technologies are imperfectly exclud...Read more...

Journal article

The Journal of Finance:

Tracing the international transmission of a crisis through multinational firms

We show that multinational firms transmit shocks across countries through their internal capital markets. We study a credit supply shock to parent firms in Germany. International affiliates outside Germany supported thei...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Responsible sourcing? Theory and evidence from Costa Rica

Multinational enterprises (MNEs) increasingly impose "Responsible Sourcing" (RS) standards on their suppliers worldwide, including requirements on worker compensation, benefits and working conditions. Are these policies ...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Multinationals, robots and the labor share

Using a panel of Spanish manufacturing firms covering the 1990-2017 period, this paper shows that firms acquired by multinational enterprises experience a reduction in the labor share. Acquisitions drive significant chan...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Epidemics and rapacity of multinational companies

Do multinationals engage in rent-seeking behaviour in developing countries during crises? With a difference in discontinuity approach, we use the Ebola epidemic in Liberia as a natural experiment on the sharp increase in...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Omnia Juncta in Uno*: foreign powers and trademark protection in Shanghai's concession era

We examine how trademark protection - a prevalent but underexplored intellectual property right - affects international firms and market outcomes in an emerging economy. Exploiting the unexpected introduction of China's ...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Business groups as knowledge-based hierarchies of firms

Hierarchical differentiation is a cornerstone of the organizing process. In this paper, we do three things. First, exploiting a newly assembled dataset, we provide the first worldwide overview of the patterns of hierarch...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Gravity in international finance: evidence from fees on equity transactions

We shed light on the impact of institutional quality and information barriers on trade in financial services using a novel panel data set on revenue earned on domestic and cross-border equity securities underwriting tran...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Managing global production: theory and evidence from just-in-time supply chains

Global value chains are highly fragmented across countries and dominated by a few large multinational firms. But the challenges of an increasingly difficult international business environment are raising the question of ...Read more...

Journal article

European Economic Review:

Host-country financial development and multinational activity

This paper evaluates the influence of host-country financial conditions on the global operations of multinational firms. Using detailed U.S. data, we establish that financial development in a country is associated with r...Read more...

Journal article

Tijdschrift voor Economische en Sociale Geografie, Journal of Economic and Human Geography:

The geography of foreign investments in the EU neighbourhood

This paper aims at investigating the drivers of Multinational Enterprise (MNE) investment in countries linked to the `core? of the European Union (EU 15) by different degrees of functional, economic and political integra...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Intrafirm trade and vertical fragmentation in US multinational corporations

Using firm-level data, we document two new facts regarding intrafirm trade and the activities of the foreign affiliates of U.S. multinational corporations. First, intrafirm trade is concentrated among a small number of l...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Global Value Chains During the Great Trade Collapse: A Bullwhip Effect?

This paper analyzes the performance of global value chains during the trade collapse. To do so, it exploits a unique transaction-level dataset on French firms containing information on cross-border monthly transactions m...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Wage Bargaining and the Boundaries of the Multinational Firm

Do variations in labor market institutions across countries affect the cross-border organization of the firm? Using firm-level data on multinationals located in France, we show that firms are more likely to outsource the...Read more...

SERC/Urban and Spatial Programme Discussion Paper

Spillover and Backward Linkage Effects of FDI: Empirical Evidence for the UK

Recent work (including that of the author) on the impact of FDI has been based on microlevel (i.e. firms, establishments or plants) data, since this allows much greater control when examining such issues as whether FDI p...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Multinational Firms, Monopolistic Competition and Foreign Investment Uncertainty

This is a model of multinational firms, which introduces option value of foreign direct investment, into a framework of Dixit-Stiglitz type monopolistic competition. Starting from a pure trading equilibrium and solving f...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Intra-Industry Foreign Direct Investment

We use a new firm level data set that establishes the location, ownership, and activity of 650,000 multinational subsidiaries?close to a comprehensive picture of global multinational activity. A number of patterns emerge...Read more...

CEP discussion paper

Multinationals and US Productivity Leadership: Evidence from Great Britain

We study the productivity of US owned plants in the UK. Using a new dataset that identifies foreign and domestic MNEs, we find that UK MNEs are less productive than US affiliates, but as productive as non US foreign affi...Read more...