This paper examines how technology transfer within U. S. multinational firms changes in response to a series of IPR reforms undertaken by sixteen countries over the 1982–1999 period. Analysis of detailed firm-level data reveals that royalty payments for technology transferred to affiliates increase at the time of reforms, as do affiliate R&D expenditures and total levels of foreign patent applications. Increases in royalty payments and R&D expenditures are concentrated among affiliates of parent companies that use U. S. patents extensively prior to reform and are therefore expected to value IPR reform most. For this set of affiliates, increases in royalty payments exceed 30 percent. I.

Why is United States the world’s most productive economy? Using plant level data for the UK we show that plants owned by US firms in Great Britain also are the productivity leaders, ahead of both plants owned by non US foreign multinationals (MNE) and UK MNEs. Our study differs from many previous studies on this topic in three ways. Firstly, using a newly available dataset we can identify not only foreign but also domestic MNEs. We find that UK MNEs are less productive than US owned plants, but as productive as non US foreign owned plants. Secondly, we examine the robustness of our results across a wide range of productivity measures and suggest a modified version of the TFP estimation framework put forward by Olley and Pakes [28]. ∗This work contains statistical data from the Office of National Statistics (ONS) which is Crown copyright and reproduced with the permission of the controller of HMSO and Queens Printer for Scotland. The use of the ONS statistical data in this work does not imply the endorsement of the ONS in relation to the interpretation or analysis of the statistical data. We are especially grateful to Jonathan Haskel for his invaluable help and advice. For extremely helpful comments we thank Richard Disney, Steve Nickell, Nick

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Management know-how shapes the productivity of firms, and can be reallocated across countries as managers acquire control of factors of production abroad. We construct a quantitative model to investigate the aggregate consequences of the international reallocation of management know-how. Using aggregate data, we infer the relative scarcity of this form of know-how in a sample of developing countries. We find that developing countries gain, on average, 12 % in output and 5 % in welfare (with wide variation across countries) when they eliminate policy barriers to foreign control of domestic factors of production.

We review the econometric literature on measuring the returns to R&D. The theoretical frameworks that have been used are outlined, followed by an extensive discussion of measurement and econometric issues that arise when estimating the models. We then provide a series of tables summarizing the major results that have been obtained and conclude with a presentation of R&D spillover returns measurement. In general, the private returns to R&D are strongly positive and somewhat higher than those for ordinary capital, while the social returns

This paper offers a portrait of Italian firms that trade goods. Combining data on firms’ structural characteristics and economic performance with data on their exporting and importing activity, we uncover evidence supporting recent theories on firm heterogeneity and international trade, together with some new facts. In particular, we find that importing can be as important as exporting as a source of firm heterogeneity. First, we document that trade is more concentrated than employment and sales, and we show that import is even more concentrated than export both within sectors and along the sector and country extensive margins. Second, while supporting the fact that firms involved in both importing and exporting (two-way traders) are the best performers, we also find that firms involved only in importing activities perform better than those involved only in exporting. We submit that this may have to do with being mainly importers of high-tech capital goods. Third, the performance premia of internationalized firms correlate relatively more with the degree of geographical and

Using an industry-level dataset of production and trade spanning 75 countries and 5 decades, and a fully specified multi-sector Ricardian model, we estimate productivities at the sector level and examine how they evolve over time in both developed and developing countries. We find that in both country groups, comparative advantage has become weaker: productivity grew systematically faster in sectors that were initially at the greater comparative disadvantage. The global welfare implications of this phenomenon are significant. Relative to the counterfactual scenario in which an individual country’s comparative advantage remained the same as in the 1960s, and technology in all sectors grew at the same country-specific average rate, welfare today is 1.9 % lower for the median country. The welfare impact varies greatly across countries,

Abstract We use a new plant-level dataset to study the effect of two reforms aimed at increasing product market competition in India -liberalization of foreign direct investment (FDI) and reduction in tariff rates. First, we examine the effect of the liberalization policies on mean plant-level productivity in the liberalized industries. We find a 23% increase in productivity level following the FDI liberalization and a 33% increase following tariff liberalization (comparing mean value added log productivity levels in 1994-95 to the pre-reform 1987-90 period). We check the robustness of these results to: (a) using alternative measures of productivity; (b) using alternative definitions of the liberalization variable; and (c) inclusion of controls to address possible bias from the selection of industries into liberalization regimes. The tariff liberalization effect is generally robust; the FDI liberalization effect is 14%-16% when controlling for non-random selection. Next, we examine aggregate productivity growth in liberalized industries; we find a 16% (15.6%) increase following FDI (tariff) liberalization. This increase appears to be driven by improvement in intra-plant productivity growth, with a small role for re-allocation. Finally, we examine who benefitted from the productivity gains; we find that the major beneficiaries were wholesale consumers (in the form of relatively lower wholesale output prices in the liberalized sectors).

This paper discusses and models the potential of FDI inflows to affect host country economic growth. The paper argues that FDI should have a positive effect on economic growth as a result of technology spillovers and physical capital inflows. Performing both cross-section and panel data analysis on a dataset

We investigate, using firm level data for 79 developed and developing countries, whether differences in the allocation of resources across heterogeneous plants are a significant determinant of cross-country differences in income per worker. For this purpose, we use a standard version of the neoclassical growth model augmented to incorporate monopolistic competition among heterogeneous firms. For our preferred calibration, the model explains 58 % of the log variance of income per worker. This figure should be compared to the 42 % success rate of the usual model. JEL classification: O1.