A quantitative approach to multinational production

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: Ramondo, Natalia
• 署名单位: University of California System; University of California San Diego
• 刊物名称: JOURNAL OF INTERNATIONAL ECONOMICS
• ISSN/ISSBN: 0022-1996
• DOI: 10.1016/j.jinteco.2014.01.004
• 发表日期: 2014
• 页码: 108-122
• 关键词: Multinational production; Foreign direct investment; welfare gains; gravity; calibration

摘要

I examine new data on the number and revenues of foreign affiliates of multinational firms across a large number of country pairs. The data shed light on the behavior of the intensive and extensive margins of multinational production (MP). To capture the patterns observed in the data, I build and calibrate a multi-country general-equilibrium model of MP that combines a Lucas (1978) span-of-control with an Eaton and Kortum (2002) type model, and includes both fixed and variable costs of opening affiliates abroad. I use the calibrated model to calculate the gains that a country would experience from liberalizing access to foreign firms. Those calculations suggest that the welfare losses of closing up to foreign firms would be around 4%, while the gains of liberalizing access to foreign firms would be large, particularly if the variable - rather than the fixed - component of MP costs were lowered. (C) 2014 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.