Seems you have not registered as a member of localhost.saystem.shop!
You may have to register before you can download all our books and magazines, click the sign up button below to create a free account.
Pollution Havens and Foreign Direct Investment
The "pollution haven" hypothesis states that multinational firms, particularly those in highly polluting industries, relocate to countries with weak environmental standards. Despite the plausibility and popularity of this hypothesis, Smarzynska and Wei find only weak evidence in its favor.
Global Integration and Technology Transfer
The importance of international technology diffusion (ITD) for economic development can hardly be overstated. Both the acquisition of technology and its diffusion foster productivity growth. Developing countries have long sought to use both national policies and international agreements to stimulate ITD. The 'correct' policy intervention, if any, depends critically upon the channels through which technology diffuses internationally and the quantitative effects of the various diffusion processes on efficiency and productivity growth. Neither is well understood. New technologies may be embodied in goods and transferred through imports of new varieties of differentiated products or capital goods and equipment, they may be obtained through exposure to foreign buyers or foreign investors or they may be acquired through arms-length trade in intellectual property, e.g., licensing contracts. 'Global Integration and Technology Transfer' uses cross-country and firm level panel data sets to analyze how specific activities exporting, importing, FDI, joint ventures impact on productivity performance.
Do the Biggest Aisles Serve a Brighter Future?
During the past two decades many economies have opened their retail sector to foreign direct investment, yet little is known about possible implications of such liberalization on the economies of developing host countries. Using firm-level data from Romania, this study examines how the presence of global retail chains affects firms in the supplying industries. Applying a difference-in-differences method, the econometric analyses yield the following conclusions. The expansion of global retail chains leads to a significant increase in the total factor productivity in the supplying industries. Their presence in a region increases the total factor productivity of firms in the supplying industrie...
Policies Facilitating Firm Adjustment to Globalization
"Hoekman and Javorcik focus on policies facilitating firm adjustment to globalization. They briefly review the effects of trade and investment liberalization on firms, focusing on within-industry effects. They postulate that governments' role in supporting the process is to (1) ensure that firms face "right" incentives to adjust, and (2) intervene in areas where market failures are present. Their main message is that while many policies could be adopted to address market failures, they need to be carefully designed and implemented in a stable macroeconomic environment. An institutional infrastructure that supports the functioning of modern markets is most important. Proactive support policie...
Technological Asymmetry Among Foreign Investors and Mode of Entry
How does the preferred entry mode of foreign investors depend upon their technological capability relative to that of their rivals? This paper develops a simple duopoly model of mode choice and evaluates its main testable implication using data on foreign investors in Eastern European countries and the successor states of the Soviet Union. The theoretical model captures the following intuitive trade-off: while a joint venture (JV) can help a foreign investor secure a better position in the product market vis-a-vis its rival, it also requires that profits be shared with the local partner. The model predicts that the efficient foreign investor is less likely to choose a JV and more likely to enter directly. Our empirical analysis supports this prediction: foreign investors with more sophisticated technologies and marketing skills (relative to other firms in their industry) tend to prefer direct entry to joint ventures. This empirical finding is robust to controlling for host country specific effects and other commonly cited determinants of entry mode.
DOES IT MATTER WHERE YOU COME FROM? Vertical Spillovers from Foreign Direct Investment and the Nationality of Investors
"Javorcik, Saggi, and Spatareanu use a firm-level panel data set from Romania to examine whether the nationality of foreign investors affects the degree of vertical spillovers from foreign direct investment. Investors' country of origin may matter for spillovers to domestic producers in upstream sectors (supplying intermediate inputs) in two ways. First, the share of intermediate inputs sourced by multinationals from a host country is likely to increase with the distance between the host and the source economy. Second, the sourcing pattern is likely to be affected by preferential trade agreements that cover some but not other source economies. In this case, the Association Agreement signed b...
Does Services Liberalization Benefit Manufacturing Firms?
While there is considerable empirical evidence on the impact of liberalizing trade in goods, the effects of services liberalization have not been empirically established. Using firm-level data from the Czech Republic for the period 1998-2003, this study examines the link between services sector reforms and the productivity of domestic firms in downstream manufacturing. Several aspects of services reform are considered and measured, namely, the increased presence of foreign providers, privatization, and enhanced competition. The manufacturing-services linkage is measured using information on the degree to which manufacturing firms in a particular industry rely on intermediate inputs from spec...
Foreign Direct Investment and Integration Into Global Production and Distribution Networks
Integration into the production and marketing arrangements of multinational corporations may offer many benefits to transition economies that, after a long period of isolation, have liberalized trade and investment. The fragmentation of production offers a unique opportunity for producers in developing countries to move from servicing small local markets to supplying large firms abroad and, indirectly, their customers all over the world.
Techological Leadership and Foreign Investors Choice of Entrty Mode
Developing country governments tend to favor joint ventures over other forms of foreign direct investment, believing that local participation facilitates the transfer of technology and marketing skills. However, foreign investors who are technological or marketing leaders in their industries are more likely to invest in wholly owned projects than to share ownership. Thus in R&D-intensive sectors joint ventures may offer less potential for transferring technology and marketing techniques than wholly owned subsidiaries.
Openness and Industrial Response in a Wal-Mmart World
"This paper uses a case study approach to explore the effects of NAFTA and GATT membership on innovation and trade in the Mexican soaps, detergents, and surfactants (SDS) industry. Several basic findings emerge. First, the most fundamental effect of the NAFTA and the GATT on the SDS industry was to help induce Wal-Mart to enter Mexico. Once there, Walmex fundamentally changed the retail sector, forcing SDS firms to cut their profit margins and innovate. Those unable to respond to this new environment tended to lose market share and, in some cases, disappear altogether. Second, partly in response to Walmex, many Mexican producers logged impressive efficiency gains during the previous decade. ...
