foreign direct investment intra firm trade and ownership structure abstract asymmetric information about true opportunity cost in trade between a multinational and its foreign affiliate can alleviate the hold up problem in foreign direct investment selling shares in the affiliate to locals is also beneficial because it increases the parent multinational s information rent that is protected from a host government s confiscatory taxation

the multinational firm and exhaustible resources a multinational firm trading in exhaustible resources is examined the exhaustibility of the transferred good requires the generalization of some existing concepts and introduces some new results the optimal extraction strategy is examined and comparative static implications of government policies are established the performance of the multinational is compared with the outcomes that arise in the absence of a multinational under varying assumptions concerning the nature of the market in the latter case the behaviour of the firm is seen to depend crucially upon the transfer price limitations imposed by the governments this issue is complicated by the lack of an obvious set of such limitations

is the wto passe the wto has delivered policy outcomes that are very different from those likely to emerge out of the recent wave of preferential trade agreements ptas should economists see this as an efficient institutional hand off where the wto has carried trade liberalization as far as it can manage and is now passing the baton to ptas to finish the job this paper surveys a growing economics literature on international trade agreements and argues on this basis that the wto is not passe rather and subject to some caveats this survey of research to date suggests that the wto warrants strong support while a more cautious view of ptas seems appropriate

endogenous transfer pricing and the effects of uncertain regulation abstract a scenario is constructed under which a multinational firm mnf faces a threat of a penalty the probability of which is based on the mnf s transfer price given this scenario the mnf s optimum transfer price could be in the interior and simultaneous interaction of the transfer price and real variables exists increased surveillance of the transfer price makes the mnf move its transfer price towards the arm s length price and checks fiscal abuses but it worsens the international allocation of resources even though the cost advantage of the exporting country increases still the impact on global welfare is ambiguous

coal fires fresh air and the hardy british a historical view of domestic energy efficiency and thermal comfort in britain fuel poverty has been most commonly researched in the uk although it is experienced in other parts of europe to varying degrees boardman 1991 showed that energy inefficient buildings and heating systems are the most significant components of fuel poverty and highlighted the legacy of older buildings in this country that remain the majority of those now recognised as hard to treat this paper considers the historical context for fuel poverty as a particularly british phenomenon it examines claims that this is due to the mild climate and low indoor temperature expectations it is concluded that there are significant differences from the european situation the climate particularly its characteristic changeability has influenced building and heating methods and the low priority given to energy efficiency by legislators significantly economic priorities produced poor quality mass housing during the industrial revolution the availability of coal encouraged the use of open fires which demanded high ventilation rates the british do value warmth but older buildings designed for heating with radiant open fires are difficult to adapt to convective central heating lessons can be drawn for newly industrialised economies similarly producing poor quality mass housing with low priorities for energy efficiency

foreign subsidiary transfer pricing and tariffs in the transfer pricing literature horst 12 concludes that the multinational firm mnf will generally charge a low transfer price ltp while other authors are ambivalent on this question this paper shows that less than whole ownership over the subsidiary generally makes the mnf change its transfer pricing strategy from desiring a ltp to wanting a high transfer price htp the conditions for an htp are fairly broad so that we are more likely to observe it than has been suggested in the literature the mnf literature also presumes that the host country loses revenue due to an htp however this view ignores the effects of tariffs on a government s revenue if tariff revenue is included an htp can increase the host country s revenue

performance verifiability and output sharing in collaborative ventures this paper studies the problem of contracting between two firms when they try to exploit their complementary resources in a collaborative venture cv but their performance in the cv cannot be precisely verified by the other party or by a third party arbiter using a mathematical model that treats performance verifiability as a continuous variable the paper first establishes that a party whose performance cannot be perfectly verified has an incentive to shirk if it is paid only a flat fee and that this shirking problem is more severe as its performance is less verifiable then the paper shows in a general setting that a contract under which each party shares a fraction of the output is superior to a contract under which one of them is paid only a flat fee when performance verifiability is sufficiently low in addition with some specific assumptions about the forms of the revenue and cost functions the paper also shows that a party s share of the venture s residual output in the equilibrium is an increasing function of its productivity and a decreasing function of its opportunity cost finally the numerical examples constructed in the paper suggest that a contract which combines the self enforcing mechanism of output sharing with the third party enforcement mechanism of arbitration generally performs better than a contract that utilizes only one of these mechanisms

perverse intra firm trade this paper shows that linkages between domestic costs and direction of intra firm trade break down when the multinational firms mnfs face tax rate differentials thus in the context of mnfs conclusions drawn on the assumption of equal or nonexistent tax rates cannot be assumed to extend to the general case of unequal tax rates further saving on profit taxes itself can be a powerful motive for internalisation

optimal regulation of multinationals under collusion this paper analyses the optimal collusion proof mechanism for the regulation of multinational firms mnfs in foreign direct investment fdi projects there is a host country with a profitable investment opportunity either a multinational firm mnf or a local firm lf can undertake this project nonetheless due to its firm specific advantage and the mnf has the potential to create a larger surplus the host government faces an informational constraint such that it cannot observe the extra surplus the mnf can generate using this set up karabay 2010 shows that employing foreign ownership restrictions to force a joint venture jv can help the host government to partially overcome its information disadvantage in this paper we extend karabay 2010 by studying the host government s optimal regulatory policy when the mnf and the lf can collude it turns out collusion imposes no cost on the host government and the expected welfare attained in the absence of collusion can still be secured under collusion

time inconsistency of protectionist programs protectionist trade policies have long been advocated as second best instruments to achieve certain national objectives in situations where there is a market imperfection in essence protection provides time and resources for firms to undertake cost reducing investments recently there has been an emergence of new arguments to justify the implementation of a national industrial policy to encourage investment and to ensure the competitiveness of targeted industries also at the theoretical level a new argument known as strategic trade policy has emerged according to this argument protectionism gives domestic firms strategic advantage against foreign firms to capture a greater share of export markets where rents are not competed away actually the performance of protectionist programs has been grim industries have not adapted and protection has had to be renewed again and again arguments justifying protection have avoided this issue by implicitly assuming that authorities can credibly precommit to eliminate protection this is a very strong assumption in fact government actions are not exogenous but they are rather the result of an optimization process or they are best responses to political pressures as stressed in the public choice literature 2 therefore if authorities capitulate to protectionist pressures in the present they are unlikely to resist them in the future in the event that the targeted firm would not have adapted the inability of authorities to precommit to the unconditional elimination of protection generates a trade off for the firm if during the program the firm does not invest sufficiently in cost

transfer pricing regulation and tax competition abstract the paper analyzes multinational enterprises incentives to manipulate internal transfer prices to take advantage of tax differences across countries and implications of transfer pricing regulations as a countermeasure against such profit shifting we find that tax motivated foreign direct investment fdi may entail inefficient internal production but may benefit consumers thus encouraging transfer pricing behavior to some extent can enhance social welfare furthermore we consider tax competition between two countries to explore its interplay with transfer pricing regulations we show that the fdi source country will be willing to set a higher tax rate and tolerate some profit shifting to a tax haven country if the regulation is tight enough we also indicate a novel mechanism through which it is the larger country that undertakes tax motivated fdi the pattern we often observe in reality

do safeguard tariffs and antidumping duties open or close technology gaps abstract this paper examines how the country breadth of tariff protection can affect the technology adoption decisions of both domestic import competing and foreign exporting firms the contribution of the analysis is to show how firm level technology adoption changes under tariffs of different country breadth i show that a country specific tariff like an antidumping duty induces both domestic import competing firms and foreign exporting firms to adopt a new technology earlier than they would under free trade in contrast a broadly applied tariff like a safeguard can accelerate technology adoption by a domestic import competing firm but will slow down technology adoption by foreign exporting firms because safeguard tariffs can delay the foreign firm s adoption of new technology the worldwide welfare costs associated with using them may be larger than is generally believed

strategic export policy with foreign direct investment and import substitution abstract the paper examines discretionary and strategic foreign direct investment fdi incentives in the export sector relative to a non interventionist policy the analysis is based on a two country model with both countries seeking to attract fdi countries differ in cost levels and in their levels of tariff protection on intermediate inputs a shift in the trade policy regime toward the strategic promotion of exports results in a decrease in fdi allocated to the low cost country when it has a low level of protection on intermediate inputs and an increase in fdi when it has a high level of protection on intermediates inputs furthermore even if fdi increases with export policy activism relative to non intervention welfare may be lower

transfer pricing double taxation and the cost of capital the effects of double taxation are analysed when a multinational enterprise can shift profits by transfer pricing behaviour it is shown that the well known hartman sinn neutrality result may not hold in this case surprisingly an increase in the taxation of foreign dividends may lead to a lower cost of capital for the foreign subsidiary i introduction in recent years there has been growing awareness that multinational firms can evade a large portion of their statutory tax burden by manipulating transfer prices in cross border transactions one reason for shifting profits between jurisdictions using transfer pricing is the differences in corporate tax rates by underpricing intra company sales and overpricing intracompany purchases a subsidiary located in a high tax country can increase the multinational s overall profit since the parent s gain in after tax profit is higher than the subsidiary s net of tax loss a second reason for setting

imports domestic production and transnational vertical integration a theoretical note suppose a developing country has the choice of importing cars i or producing them at home in a subsidiary s of a transnational company or in a domestic firm under a licensing l contract from a transnational which ties the import of components from the latter if the criterion of national benefit is given by consumer surplus under i or s and by consumer surplus plus the profits of the domestic firm under l we compare the benefits from the alternative regimes i s or l under different market structure assumptions in most cases the regime s seems to dominate the conclusions are then modified by pointing to factors excluded from the basic model

entry strategies for multinational enterprises and host countries abstract a multinational enterprise mne has a number of investment strategies to enter into a foreign market such as foreign direct investment fdi joint venture jv exclusive licensing el and others in contrast a host government also has the choice to introduce a suitable entry strategy into its local market with the objective of maximizing its tax revenue or national social welfare in this paper we explore the optimal strategies for not only a mne but also a host country

international business alliance under asymmetric information technology vis a vis information advantage author affiliation chifeng dai daic siu edusajal lahiri lahiri siu edu corresponding author acknowledgment we are grateful to two anonymous referees for extremely helpful comments and suggestions 1 introductioninternational inter firm business cooperation as a means to reach a foreign marketplace has been rapidly increasing in popularity and has been growing hand in hand with the overall process of globalization business collaborations in general take different forms licensing franchising and joint venture jv are two important forms of this collaboration the exact nature of the contract between firms can also take different forms involving one or more of the following up front licensing fees equity investments annual maintenance fees milestone payments and royalties 1 for example under the jv agreement between generex biotechnology canada and sejong capital korea sejong agrees to invest 25 million in the jv as a non refundable license fee paid to generex and to purchase 5 million of generex s equity under the jv agreement between cambridge biostability united kingdom and panacea biotec india panacea purchased 1 935 million of cambridge s equity up front and signed a long term licensing agreement that provides gross royalty income to cambridge over the agreement period 2apart from the contractual arrangements another important issue in international business cooperation is the question of transfer or adaptation of technology for the international alliance ia and this has received a lot of attention in the literature see for example katz rebentisch and allen 1996 it is generally agreed that the technology adaptation issue is a rather complicated engineering and economic issue and often requires significant efforts there are four broad research questions here first why do firms from developing and industrialized countries form an alliance miller et al 1997 studied 76 ias in six developing countries they found that more than 65 of the foreign companies chose domestic partners because of their knowledge of local politics government regulations local custom and local markets and more than 70 of the domestic firms in developing countries sought collaboration with multinationals based on their superior technology the second question involves why ias have diverse contractual arrangements the third question involves how each firm s advantage and disadvantage in technology and market information affect their profits in ias do firms in the alliance always prefer more market information and better technology the final question has to do with whether technology spillover hinders the formation of an ia 3in order to answer some of the research questions outlined above we consider a simple model consisting of two firms a multinational corporation mnc and a domestic firm the firms operate under uncertain market demand the mnc possesses a production technology that is superior to that of the domestic firm however the domestic firm has an information advantage in the sense that with costly and non contractable efforts it can predict demand conditions with some probability we start with the case in which the credit market is perfect and the technology adaptation in the ia is exogenous and costless we show that in the ia the mnc optimally charges the domestic firm a lump sum payment but offers it the entire profits of the ia under the contractual arrangement market uncertainty and the domestic firm s ability to gather information increase the domestic firm s profits but not the mnc s profits in ia however the mnc prefers duopoly competition to ia if the technology adaptation is imperfect and the domestic firm s production technology is exceedingly inferior we then deviate from the benchmark case in two different directions but one at a time

national ownership requirements and transfer pricing abstract this paper examines the interaction between a national ownership requirement and transfer pricing it turns out that where indigenization implies managerial control by domestic owners it may result in greater retained profits and a more intensive use of domestic resources

the political economy of declining industries senescent industry collapse revisited many observers have noted a strong tendency for protection once it is instituted to persist over time this paper first shows that persistent protection arises whenever lobbying is an alternative to costly adjustment with endogenous protection the level of tariffs is an increasing function of past tariffs the more an industry lobbies the greater the current protection it receives and the less it adjusts and the less the industry adjusts the more effective it is as a lobby in the future when the costs of lobbying and adjustment are fully variable declining industries contract more slowly over time and never fully adjust however the paper shows that adding a fixed cost of lobby formation or maintenance is sufficient to generate an endogenous collapse of protection such as that predicted by cassing and hillman 1986 american economic review 76 516 523 in which an industry abruptly terminates its lobbying and loses its protection finally the paper examines the well documented bias against growing industries in the lobbying process

imports as competitive discipline the role of the productivity gap abstract this paper addresses the impact of foreign competition on the competitive advantage of domestic firms and the role of trade policy in an endogenous growth framework it shows that the impact of foreign competition on r d and productivity depends on the industry s relative position trade liberalization promotes innovation and enhances welfare in mature industries but hinders growth and leads to market exit in infant industries with a large productivity gap in the latter case temporary protection promotes the survival of the firm and increases welfare at the margin hence we integrate the old argument for the temporary protection of infant industries with the notion that foreign competition fosters innovation and productivity

time consistent protection with learning by doing abstract can a government induce efficiency gains in his domestic industry by protecting it against foreign competition would such trade protection be time consistent the present paper builds a dynamic equilibrium model that accounts for learning by doing effects that link firms strategies over time the model shows that the existence of dynamic economies of scale suffices to overcome the traditional government s lack of commitment of its tariff policy this paper compares the infinite horizon markov perfect equilibrium of this game with the dynamic equilibrium under commitment as well as the static nash equilibrium equilibrium strategies are derived in closed form by solving a linear quadratic differential game optimal trade policy involves higher tariff levels than in the static setup in order to account for future gains in efficiency under reasonable assumptions the unique stable mpe is characterized by a domestic price and tariff that decrease as experience accumulates thus supporting the future liberalization of trade as an equilibrium feature of this dynamic game

host country policy transfer pricing and ownership distribution in international joint ventures a theoretical analysis abstract this paper develops a simple model of an international joint venture in which the ownership shares are endogenously determined as the outcome of nash bargaining between a multinational firm and a host firm it shows how tax subsidy policy by the host country s government and transfer pricing of inputs by the multinational firm may influence the equity distribution of the joint venture insofar as the optimal level of these policies is dependent on the primitives the model generates empirical hypotheses regarding the impact of the primitives on the equity distribution

strategic tax competition implications of national ownership abstract two jurisdictions compete to capture the rents of a large multinational enterprise mne which invests locally and which is partly owned by local investors the mne contributes to local welfare by tax payments and dividends and it has private information about the efficiency of the operations in the two localisations it is shown that the distortions in the mne s real investment portfolio are determined by a trade off between fiscal externalities and equity externalities and that investments in the case of strategic tax competition may be lower than in the co operative case ownership matters and we show how the firm may reduce its overall tax payments by influencing the distribution of owner shares between investors in the two countries

joint venture buy outs under uncertainty this paper provides a theory of joint venture buy outs in the presence of demand uncertainty in an infinite horizon framework with demand uncertainty we consider a foreign firm s decision on whether to form a joint venture or to open a fully owned subsidiary without the possibility of future share adjustment the foreign firm enters the market through a joint venture if the host country firm helps to reduce the uncertainty significantly consequently the firm enters at an earlier point in time compared to the situation in which opening a fully owned subsidiary is the only option to the firm the possibility of future share adjustment in the joint venture further increases the incentive to speed up foreign investment although the possibility of share adjustment results in a joint venture buy out and can reduce the future profits of the host country firm it may increase host country welfare by attracting foreign investment at an earlier point in time we show the implications of learning in the joint venture 2011 the authors the journal of industrial economics

credibility of trade policy reform and investment the mexican experience abstract this paper assesses whether the program of trade liberalization undertaken by mexico after 1985 was undermined by lack of credibility it provides an empirical counterpart to some of the credibility issues that have been discussed elsewhere in the literature and proposes a methodology based on the estimation of a probit model to measure the probability of trade policy reversal due to the likelihood of occurrence of a balance of payments crisis it is shown that the probability of trade policy reversal reduced indeed the rate of capital accumulation during the first years of the reform

externalities and technology transfer through multinational corporations a theoretical analysis abstract this paper examines the optimal behavior of a multinational firm s subsidiary in a host country when learning of its production techniques by its native rivals occurs in a dynamic framework it is shown among other things that a it is worthwhile for the subsidiary to import better technology from its parent firm and that b such technology transfer may not benefit the firms of the host country despite their learning while the host country as a whole does benefit

decentralization and transfer pricing under oligopoly this paper presents a simple model of a partially decentralized multinational firm mnf in competition with a rival firm it is shown that transfer pricing can be used as a rent shifting device by the mnf to compete with the rival this arises because the mnf headquarters uses the transfer price to manage different subsidiaries the specific value of the transfer price chosen by the mnf depends on whether the rival firm produces the intermediate good the final good or both and whether the rival is integrated or not in particular both decentralization and competition with a fully integrated rival result in lower transfer prices

inefficient foreign borrowing a dual and common agency perspective studying the implications of uncoordinated borrowing the paper first looks at whether and when countries borrow too much in the aggregate it then revisits the original sin debate analyzing whether and when equity portfolio investment international portfolio diversification domestic currency denomination and longer maturities enhance borrowing countries access to international lending the paper thereby relates a country s level and quality of access to international capital markets to a variety of institutional features such as the level of domestic savings their location the extent of control rights held by political authorities and the interests of dominant domestic political forces

informational benefits of international treaties international treaties allow a minister in one country to learn about the beliefs held by a minister in another country so allowing each to make better decisions when the net benefits of environmental policy are uncertain a country which participates in negotiating an environmental treaty or which supports strong environmental action thereby provides information to another country that such action can be worthwhile this dimension of international environmental agreements helps explain why countries negotiate treaties why these treaties often implement the nash non cooperative equilibrium why agreement to a treaty by a country deemed not particularly favorable to it can strengthen environmental action and why treaties may invoke a minimum participation clause the informational mechanism we discuss holds even if physical spillovers are absent and even if monitoring and enforcement are infeasible our approach can explain additional phenomena how requirements for approval by several bodies within a country can increase support for a policy and why simultaneous action can lead to better outcomes than sequential action

social equity issues in the distribution of feed in tariff policy benefits a cross sectional analysis from england and wales using spatial census and policy data abstract the feed in tariff has become a popular policy instrument globally for deploying clean energy often involving substantial public spending commitments yet relatively little attention has been paid to how payments made under this policy type get distributed across socioeconomic groups this paper links information on individual domestic photovoltaic pv installations registered under the feed in tariff for england and wales to spatially organised census data this makes it possible to observe which socioeconomic groups are benefitting most and least under the policy comparing the observed benefit distribution to a counterfactual distribution of perfect equality a moderate to high level of inequality is found cross sectional regressions suggest that settlement density home ownership status physical dwelling type local information spillovers and household social class shaped this outcome greater sensitivity to these factors in policy design could improve distributional outcomes under feed in tariff policies in england and wales and beyond

poor energy poor energy saving obligations distributional effects and the malfunction of the priority group abstract the european union s energy efficiency directive forces the member states to install energy efficiency obligation schemes in a first step this paper identifies the distributional effects caused by this policy instrument which occur when energy efficiency measures are implemented phase of delivery and when its costs are passed on to the society phase of financing in the phase of delivery suppliers prefer to implement measures at the property of those customers which enable them to minimise their costs i e enterprises with large energy savings potentials and high income households who can contribute a greater share of the costs in the phase of financing distributional effects occur when the costs of the scheme are passed on from the obliged suppliers to their customers primarily affecting less competitive customers i e households and small enterprises in the british scheme the so called priority group was installed in order to decrease distributional effects and to support energy poor households in a second step this paper evaluates approaches to reduce energy poverty and indicates ineffectiveness high transaction costs and incoherency with the aims of the obligation scheme alternative approaches to tackle energy poverty are briefly described

spillovers from foreign direct investment within or between industries this paper contributes an estimation framework to measure both technological and linkage externalities from foreign direct investment fdi empirical research dealt mainly with intra industry spillovers from fdi with restrictive treatment of inter industry effects until recently however as optimal organization of the multinational corporation mnc involves minimization of profit losses due to leakage of technical information to competitors host country firms within the mnc s sector experience limited productivity gains ensuing fdi host country producers in other sectors may benefit for example mncs transfer knowledge to local downstream clients or outsource to local upstream suppliers hence fdi substitutes within sector domestic investment but complements it across sectors the net impact on aggregate capital formation by host country producers hinges on the interaction between linkages and spillovers estimations based on the colombian manufacturing census yield the sectoral pattern of fdi spillovers displaying knowledge propagation between but not within industries the findings reveal outsourcing relationships of mncs with local upstream suppliers as the channel of diffusion

capital market imperfections and forms of foreign operations abstract we develop a model of foreign operations to determine a parent firm s choice between wholly owned subsidiaries and joint ventures and the degree of equity participation in the latter case we introduce capital market imperfections into the model to capture a positive effect of the firm s net worth on investment this effect plays an important role in determining organization forms because the investment level affects the optimal form which determines technology transfer we show that parent firms with strong technological advantages can be controlling shareholders even if they take minority positions in ventures with local firms

do credible domestic institutions promote credible international agreements we examine the relationship between international policy coordination and domestic policy reputation when both are self sustaining we show that domestic policy commitment does not necessarily facilitate international cooperation rather efficient policies may be most easily sustained when governments are unable to pre commit to policy domestically moreover the lack of domestic commitment is more likely to facilitate international cooperation the larger the international spillovers of domestic policies are

the multinational firm with arm s length transfer price limits abstract a multinational firm faced with arm s length limitations on its transfer prices is examined where the limitations are determined by the firm s marginal cost and intracountry prices such a firm is shown to manipulate its production and sales in order to gain a more desirable transfer price comparative static results develop policy implications not found in simpler models which often assume the firm to be constrained by arm s length limits but to be unaware of the effects of its actions on the limits

debt shifting and ownership structure abstract previous theoretical studies on the debt shifting behavior of multinationals have assumed affiliates of multinationals to be wholly owned we develop a model that allows a multinational firm to determine both the leverage and ownership structure in affiliates endogenously a main finding is that affiliates with minority owners have less debt than wholly owned affiliates and therefore a less tax efficient financing structure this is due to an externality that arises endogenously in our model where costs and benefits of debt shifting are shared asymmetrically between minority and majority owners our findings provide a theory framework for recent empirical findings

intellectual property rights and the mode of technology transfer abstract transferring technology in an environment where patent protection is uncertain can pose significant risks to an innovating firm s ability to appropriate rents this paper incorporates asymmetric information in a screening game where the innovating firm has the choices of licensing a new product at arm s length to a foreign firm exporting it or licensing it to a subsidiary subsidiary production avoids the risk of imitation but involves higher costs for the innovating firm the gains to the southern country from the lack of intellectual property right protection may be offset by strategic behavior by northern firms who opt for technology transfer via subsidiary or monopoly production

on the determinants of direct foreign investment evidence from east and southeast asia abstract a model of derived demand for foreign capital by a multiple product monopolist is estimated for seven asian countries direct foreign investment dfi inflows are estimated to be less elastic with respect to the costs of capital including taxes than to wages and to be more elastic with respect to aggregate demand in export markets than domestic demand the output deterrent effect of higher wages is estimated to outweigh any substitution toward greater capital intensity the estimates also suggest that dfi rises with greater costs within the investors home countries no similar effect occurs with respect to costs in rival host countries and concerns for political stability have overlain economic determinants

reputation in dynamic games abstract we analyze reputation in a game between a large player and a continuum of long lived small players in which state variables affect players payoffs the large player s type is private information we give conditions under which in every nash equilibrium a very patient large player will get almost the largest payoff consistent with the small players choosing a best response in a large finite truncation of the game while our results apply to the time inconsistency problem of optimal government policy we show that for the durable goods monopoly reputation may fail to improve the monopolist s payoff journal of economic literatureclassification numbers c72 c73

perfect equilibria in a trade liberalization game the credibility of temporary protection is examined in a simple infinite horizon perfect information game of timing in which the domestic government uses the threat of future liberalization to induce the domestic firm to invest all pure strategy subgame perfect equilibria are cyclical and surprisingly one of them implements optimal temporary protection however this equilibrium fails to pass another credibility criterion called renegotiation proof the game has a unique stationary subgame perfect equilibrium in mixed strategies copyright 1990 by american economic association

the multinational firm direct investment is incorporated into a simple general equilibrium model of international trade the analysis focuses on an attempt to endogenize the internalization decision it is argued that a reasonable approach assumes that arm s length contracts must be simple so that complex arrangements require internalization the model relates direct investment to the degree of underlying uncertainty and to fundamental trade determinants such as relative factor endowments the behavior of the model contrasts sharply with that of the markusen helpman model which takes internalization for granted

transaction costs of tradable white certificate schemes the energy efficiency commitment as case study this paper analyses the nature and scale of transaction costs tcs borne by obliged parties under a tradable white certificate twc scheme taking the first phase of the energy efficiency commitment eecl in great britain as a case study several sources of tcs were considered such as search for information persuasion of customers negotiation with business partners and measurement and verification activities information was obtained through interviews and a questionnaire distributed to obliged parties results show that the most significant sources of tcs were related to search for information persuading customers and negotiating with managing agents contractors to implement energy efficiency measures perceived high tcs related to contract negotiation and liability risks slightly reduced the low trading level the scale of tcs was estimated to be around 10 and 30 of total investments costs for the lighting and insulation segments respectively the results indicate that despite the presence and scale of tcs the eecl scheme generated energy savings that yielded net societal benefits estimated financial benefits range from 0 6 to 6 p kwh for insulation and lighting savings respectively when avoided external costs due to electricity savings are included estimated economic benefits range from 3 to 8 p kwh several lessons from the eecl can be drawn for twc schemes among others it is found that informative policy instruments to raise awareness among end users are critical if a twc scheme is to deliver cost effective energy savings in all the nature and scale of tcs under twc schemes will differ because of a number of endogenous and exogenous determinants c 2007 elsevier ltd all rights reserved less

did us safeguards resuscitate harley davidson in the 1980s abstract this paper examines us safeguards applied to the motorcycle market in the 1980s after receiving temporary protection by means of a maximum tariff of over 45 harley davidson sales recovered dramatically simulations based on structural demand and supply estimates indicate that while safeguard tariffs did benefit harley davidson they only account for a fraction of its increased sales this is primarily because consumers perceived that harley davidson and japanese large motorcycles were poorly matched substitutes for each other our results provide little evidence that safeguard provisions triggered restructuring in harley davidson

on the determinants of multinationals ownership preferences evidence from greece and portugal abstract the aim of the paper is to examine the determinants of the ownership preferences of manufacturing multinational firms established in greece and portugal in the 1990s differences between the two countries in terms of relative fdi size industry and ownership choices are observed transaction cost arguments together with bargaining power considerations through their effects on the affiliate s expected profits provide the theoretical basis for the econometric model which uses multinomial logit analysis on greek and portuguese data the estimations contribute to a better understanding of observed differences showing that firm and industry characteristics interacting with location affect ownership decisions

labor adjustment and gradual reform when is commitment important we analyze a model in which a government uses a second best policy to affect the reallocation of labor following a change in relative prices we consider two extreme cases in which the government has either unlimited or negligible ability to commit to future actions we discuss the factors that determine the importance of commitment ability and provide numerical examples the degree of commitment ability can alter the equilibrium policy both quantitatively and qualitatively in both extreme cases the dying sector is protected during the transition to a free market in order to decrease the amount of unemployment

the economics of joint ventures in less developed countries the paper examines the microeconomic partial equilibrium behavior of joint ventures established between transnational corporations and domestic partners in less developed countries it focuses on issues relating to resource allocation and profit distribution under various institutional scenarios the analysis places special emphasis on the role of bargaining power transfer pricing stock ownership and profit shares of the parties and the responsiveness of joint ventures to national development goals some of the results apply to wholly owned subsidiaries of transnational corporations local firms and licensing arrangements which emerge as special cases

a general unconstrained model for transfer pricing in multinational supply chains multinational supply chains operate in more than one country or tax jurisdiction and face decision problems concerned with trade flows of resources products and services transfer prices and allocation of transport costs between their divisions these decisions must consider for the sake of optimality corporate and governmental parameters such as the payment of dividends and royalties ownership of and control over subsidiaries income taxes differentials duties and quotas etc in this paper we generalize and extend the theory of the multinational firm to the case of multinational supply chains we propose a model that is more general and comprehensive than the previous ones proposed in the literature to be more specific our model integrates many of the previous research factors and includes new ones such as transport costs and duty drawbacks which are critical for supply chains that operate under international trade regulations under the maximization of the repatriated earnings objective we study the optimality conditions of the corporate decision variables to derive managerial guidelines and to determine how decisions regarding trade quantities transfer prices and transport cost allocations affect the amount of taxes to be paid to host governments as well as the total after tax repatriated earnings of the corporation

incentives to create jobs regional subsidies national trade policy and foreign direct investment a national authority wishes to attract foreign direct investment fdi to create local jobs we analyse the optimal national trade policy when local authorities might offer subsidies to convince a multi national enterprise mne to invest in their jurisdiction with centralised decision making or with allocation of investment to particular localities the central authority s optimal policy is to use a high tariff to avoid payment of any subsidy to the mne despite this some socially undesirable but locally desirable fdi cannot be avoided if local authorities compete to offer subsidies to attract local investment then the central government s optimal policy is to try to discourage fdi by choosing a low tariff despite this some socially undesirable and even locally undesirable fdi prevails we conduct our analysis both assuming an upper bound on tariffs as would be consistent with trade liberalisation and allowing tariffs to vary freely the effect of increasing trade liberalisation depends heavily on the system of granting local subsidies if the system is centralised trade liberalisation decreases the range of parameters for which fdi occurs if the system is decentralised and competitive it increases this range

technology transfer licensing and the speed of endogenous technological change abstract as licensing contracts usually require the licensee firm to purchase tied inputs from the seller of the technology the licensee firm has an incentive to embark on an r d program for development of substitutes for the tied inputs this paper characterizes the licensee firm s optimal speed of r d and the optimal expected date of switch over to the substitute inputs in an infinite horizon model under uncertainty about the timing of success of the r d program the effects of different government subsidies or taxes changes in input prices and other parameters on the optimal speed of r d and on the expected date of switchover to the substitute are also investigated it is also shown that strategic behavior by the seller of the technology may delay the development of the substitute by the licensee firm

spillovers and international competition for investments abstract two jurisdictions compete to attract shares of the investment budget of a large multinational enterprise whose investments confer positive spillovers on national firms the firm has private information about its efficiency and about spillovers it is shown that the firm may be harmed by tax competition relative to a cooperative tax agreement tax competition may induce excessive investments in the country where the positive spillover effects are lowest also with sufficiently asymmetric spillovers investments under competition will be excessively spread out not properly concentrated to the country where spillovers would be largest

policy designs in a dynamic model of infant industry protection abstract this paper takes the neoclassical infant industry model allows agents to respond to future expectations and reveals previously unexplained relationships between protection and outcome policy which projects to protect the industry until international competitiveness may not necessarily succeed consistent to the mixed empirical evaluations to guarantee success protection has to last longer however for success to be an equilibrium protection can last shorter decline after take off is also an equilibrium when adjustment speed is bounded increasing the protection rate is not isomorphic to decreasing its duration in policy design adjustment speed critical industry scale and policy duration are all relevant

a theory of joint venture life cycles abstract in this paper we provide a dynamic theory of joint venture life cycle that relies on synergy organisational learning and moral hazard we demonstrate that depending on parameter values the outcome may involve any one of the following stable joint venture formation joint venture formation followed by breakdown or cournot competition in all the periods we also provide some interesting welfare results

definitions of fuel poverty implications for policy abstract this paper outlines why the definition of fuel poverty is important in policy formulation and describes how the government s current definitions evolved from the original concept it discusses the determination of income and fuel costs and the possibilities for a relative and common european measure it examines problems inherent in assessing fuel costs as a percentage of income and puts forward the arguments for a budget standard approach the paper illustrates how the size of the problem depends on the definition and chosen threshold and suggests advantages for a rating scale it illustrates how the income composition and thresholds also govern the distribution of the target populations and the relative importance of the main causal factors and examines the consequent policy implications it explores the definition of vulnerable households and the importance of severity and questions whether the uk fuel poverty strategy is targeted at households least able to afford their fuel costs as the name implies or primarily those at risk from excess winter and summer mortality and morbidity finally after examining the role of supplementary indicators it looks at the opportunities for changing the definition and comments on the government review of the definition and targets

multinational firms global strategies host country indigenisation of ownership and welfare abstract this paper examines the costs and benefits that may arise when host countries aim to indigenise the ownership of foreign subsidiaries it is shown that there may be an optimal level of indigenisation beyond which the marginal social costs of such policies will exceed the corresponding benefits the analysis also shows that the optimum indigenisation may depend among other things on whether the subsidiary is autonomous or fully controlled by the parent company a further result is that if the subsidiaries equity is purchased by private firms or individuals the privately optimum level of indigenisation is likely to be greater than the socially optimum

a comparative analysis of the strategy and structure of united states and australian corporations an analysis of the environments of leading manufacturing firms operating in the united states and in australia produced a series of hypothesized differences in the strategies organization structures and market environments of firms in the two countries parallel hypotheses about differences between domestic australian firms and subsidiaries of foreign multinationals operating in australia were also developed

technical compatibility and the mode of foreign entry with network externalities we examine the preferences of a foreign firm and a local government over two modes of foreign direct investment de novo entry and acquisition of the domestic incumbent two crucial features of the model are network externalities and partial incompatibility between the domestic and the foreign technology the relative welfare impact of the two entry modes depends on the degree of market competition and the strength of the network externality the clash between the foreign firm s choice and the local government s ranking of the two entry modes can motivate limits on the degree of foreign ownership of the local firm ce texte examine les preferences d une firme etrangere et d un gouvernement du pays hote quant a deux modes d investissement direct de l etranger entree de novo de la firme etrangere versus acquisition d une firme domestique en place deux facteurs pris en compte sont la presence d externalites de reseau et d incompatibilite partielle entre la technologie locale et celle introduite par la firme etrangere l impact relatif des modes d entree sur le mieux etre local depend du degre de concurrence sur le marche et de l importance des externalites de reseau le conflit entre les preferences de l entreprise etrangere et les preferences du gouvernement local peuvent etre a la source de politiques qui limitent le degre de proprieteetrangere permis

regulating a monopolist with unknown costs we consider the problem of how to regulate a monopolistic firm whose costs are unknown to the regulator the regulator s objective is to maximize a linear social welfare function of the consumers surplus and the firm s profit in the optimal regulatory policy prices and subsidies are designed as functions of the firm s cost report so that expected social welfare is maximized subject to the constraints that the firm has nonnegative profit and has no incentive to misrepresent its costs we explicitly derive the optimal policy and analyze its properties in their classic papers dupuit 2 and hotelling 5 considered pricing policies for a bridge that had a fixed cost of construction and zero marginal cost they demonstrated that the pricing policy that maximizes consumer well being is to set price equal to marginal cost and to provide a subsidy to the supplier equal to the fixed cost so that a firm would be willing to provide the bridge this first best solution is based on a number of informational assumptions first the demand function is assumed to be known to both the regulator and to the firm while the assumption of complete information may be too strong the assumption that information about demand is as available to the regulator as it is to the firm does not seem unnatural a second informational assumption is that the regulator has complete information about the cost of the firm or at least has the same information about cost as does the firm this assumption is unlikely to be met in reality since the firm would be expected to have better information about costs than would the regulator as weitzman has stated an essential feature of the regulatory environment i am trying to describe is uncertainty about the exact specification of each firm s cost function in most cases even the managers and engineers most closely associated with production will be unable to precisely specify beforehand the cheapest way to generate various hypothetical output levels because they are yet removed from the production process the regulators are likely to be vaguer still about a firm s cost function 12 p 684 as this observation suggests it is natural to expect that a firm would have better information regarding its costs than would a regulator the purpose of this paper is to develop an optimal regulatory policy for the case in which the regulator does not know the costs of the firm one strategy that a regulator could use in the absence of full information about costs is to give the firm the title to the total social surplus and to delegate the pricing decision to the firm in pursuing its own interests which would then be to maximize the total social surplus the firm would adopt the same marginal cost pricing strategy that the regulator would have imposed if the regulator had

international technology transfer with an information asymmetry and endogenous research and development abstract in this paper an information asymmetry concerning technology type and the cost of operating across national boundaries interact with location considerations to determine whether international technology transfer occurs via the export of goods subsidiaries or licensing it is shown that market share restrictions and per unit royalties can signal technology type and make licensing the most attractive option in addition it is shown that policies which restrict the mode of technology transfer do not necessarily reduce the amount of research and development undertaken

pricing policies of multinational enterprises host country regulation and welfare abstract this paper examines host country price regulation policies towards a foreign subsidiary the analysis considers two prices namely the transfer prices charged to the subsidiary and the market price of the subsidiary s products it is shown that host countries should regulate both of these prices regulation of the transfer price alone may induce an increase in the subsidiary s market price and cause a loss of host country welfare regulation of both prices is more efficient for it enables the host country to attain a higher level of welfare and allows the foreign firm to earn the same level of profits as would regulation of only one of those prices

credibility of protection and incentives to innovate in recent trade policy debates it is often argued that temporary protection stimulates innovation this paper shows that the validity of the argument depends on the perceived credibility of protection policy if it is suspected that temporary protection will be removed early should innovation occur before its terminal date the protected firm invests less in r d than it does under free trade if it is expected that protection will be extended should no innovation have occurred by its terminal date investment falls below the free trade level and eventually to zero as the terminal date is approached

putting trims to good use abstract trade related investment measures trims currently on the agenda of the uruguay round are the subject of a considerable debate these measures include both regulations and incentives governing the operations of foreign firms in developing countries it is frequently argued that such measures distort trade flows and lower rather than enhance the contribution of foreign direct investment to the development objectives of the host countries this paper examines these arguments and suggests that some though not all trims judiciously used may promote development objectives

foreign direct investment and host country policies a rationale for using ownership restrictions abstract this paper examines host governments motivation for restricting ownership shares of multinational firms mnfs in foreign direct investment fdi projects an mnf with a productivity advantage is willing to invest in a host country the host government wants to capture the mnf s surplus yet cannot observe it due to the mnf s private information about its firm specific advantage in contrast a joint venture jv partner might observe this surplus depending on its ownership share the host government can alleviate its informational constraints by using ownership restrictions to force a jv this calls into question the wisdom of calls for liberalizing fdi flows by the wholesale elimination of domestic jv requirements we show that the optimal mechanism involves ownership restrictions that decrease as the size of the mnf s firm specific advantage increases

an incentive compatible approach to the transfer pricing problem abstract this paper offers an alternative approach to regulating certain types of transfer pricing if the multinational enterprise s transfer price decision is not regulated it will manipulate the transfer price in order to maximize net global profit traditional approaches argue for ad hoc penalty schedules to mitigate manipulative transfer pricing in contrast this paper offers an incentive compatible approach which explicitly incorporates the informational asymmetries that encourage misreports the model has the desirous feature that the optimal regulatory policy has self enforcing properties that is the firm will find it profit maximizing to report true costs

energy supplier obligations and white certificate schemes comparative analysis of experiences in the european union abstract a number of member states of the european union eu have introduced market based policy portfolios based on quantified energy savings obligations on energy distributors or suppliers possibly coupled with certification of project based energy savings via white certificates and the option to trade the certificates or obligations the paper provides an up to date review and analysis of results to date of white certificate schemes in the eu in the eu supplier obligations and white certificate schemes have delivered larger savings than originally expected with obliged companies exceeding targets and in some cases at cost below what policy makers have anticipated supplier obligations foster the uptake of standardised energy efficiency actions often targeting smaller energy users residential sector lowering the transaction costs and contributing to market transformation the role of certificate trading is more ambiguous trading can bring benefits where the target is set sufficiently high with respect to the energy saving potential in the sectors covered theoretically trading may be better suited for broader systems with comprehensive coverage but even in smaller schemes trading may reduce the transaction costs of compliance for obliged actors without sufficient expertise on end use energy efficiency yet trading increases the administrative cost ratio of energy saving obligations

opportunity cost trade policies and the efficiency of firms abstract this paper analyzes the effects of trade policies on the technological effort of a firm entering a new market in the context of a developing country we depart from previous literature by bringing into focus the opportunity cost of technological effort a firm that spends time in acquiring a more efficient technology delays the commercialization of its products thus incurring an opportunity cost in terms of profits forgone protection increases both the opportunity cost and the benefits from technological effort in the case of linear demand function and constant returns to scale technology protection is shown to unambiguously reduce the protected firm s technological effort export subsidy is also shown to reduce technological effort when the potential level of exports under free trade is high

infant industry tariff protection with pressure groups abstract this paper analyzes the increasing tariff protection in the spanish iron and steel industry over the first third of the 20th century learning effects are explicitly included to model a dynamic game of trade liberalization the government chooses the tariff level while firms decide how much to produce each period firms production decisions determine their future cost levels assuming that learning reduces only fixed costs the dynamic game may be solved in closed form so that the optimality and time consistency of the actual policy can be evaluated furthermore the model is used to measure the relative importance of producers and consumers on the government s equilibrium tariff strategy the model is calibrated for year 1913 and it is shown that the existence of important unexploited dynamic economies of scale may have justified high tariff levels at that time in addition the results also show that the spanish iron and steel producers behaved more competitively than what is commonly assumed and that the government s protection policy was not significantly conditioned by steel producers

intrafirm trade arm s length transfer pricing rule and coordination failure abstract this paper demonstrates that uniform imposition of the arm s length principle on transfer pricing leads to coordination failure among countries in terms of economic welfare if the countries trade products in the form of intrafirm transactions by multinational firms mnfs to highlight this implication we first show that imposition of the arm s length principle on an mnf induces it to transfer a product among subordinate divisions at marginal cost i e the competitive price which is consistent with the purpose of the principle nonetheless if regulators in each country impose the principle on mnfs all of the following economic welfare measures decrease compared with the situation where the principle is not imposed 1 consumer welfare in each of the trading countries 2 profit of each mnf and thus 3 total world economic welfare this result indicates that it is possible that enforcement of the principle has no positive effect at all in the world because economic welfare of all economic agents deteriorates when the principle is imposed a numerical analysis demonstrates that this possibility arises in a broad range of circumstances even including the situation where a giant economic world power and a small underdeveloped country mutually trade products in these circumstances an agreement among trading countries that no country imposes the arm s length principle may encourage pareto improvement of the world economy

learning from a piece of pie we investigate the empirical content of the nash solution to two player bargaining games the bargaining environment is described by a set of variables that may affect agents preferences over the agreement sharing the status quo outcome or both the outcomes i e whether an agreement is reached and if so the individual shares and the environment including the size of the pie are known but neither are the agents utilities nor their threat points we consider both a deterministic version of the model in which the econometrician observes the shares as deterministic functions of the variables under consideration and a stochastic one in which because of latent disturbances only the joint distribution of incomes and outcomes is recorded we show that in the most general framework any outcome can be rationalized as a nash solution however even mild exclusion restrictions generate strong implications that can be used to test the nash bargaining assumption stronger conditions further allow to recover the underlying structure of the bargaining and in particular the cardinal representation of individual preferences in the absence of uncertainty an implication of this finding is that empirical works entailing nash bargaining could and should use much more general and robust versions than they usually do copyright 2012 oxford university press

a mechanism design approach to transfer pricing by the multinational firm abstract this paper is about how multinationals choose transfer prices and optimal production levels in the presence of differential corporate income tax rates and local ownership requirements a key featrure of the model is that there is an asymmetric information problem between a parent and its foreign subsidiary we examine the interaction between ownership structure corporate taxes and bargaining power transfer prices induce underproduction compared to the full information case when the parent has the bargaining ability when bargaining is controlled by the subsidiary overproduction obtains the model is used to illustrate how governmental objectives can be accomplished without direct regulation of the transfer price

green industrial policy green growth requires green technologies production techniques that economize on exhaustible resources and emit fewer greenhouse gases the availability of green technologies both lowers social costs in the transition to a green growth path and helps achieve a satisfactory rate of material progress under that path the theoretical case in favour of using industrial policy to facilitate green growth is quite strong economists traditional scepticism on industrial policy is grounded instead on pragmatic considerations having to do with the difficulty of achieving well targeted and effective interventions in practice while these objections deserve serious attention i argue that they are not insurmountable a key objective of this paper is to show how the practice of industrial policy can be improved by designing institutional frameworks that counter both informational and political risks

optimal regulation of mnes and government revenues the paper analyses the optimal regulation of multinational enterprises mnes by a host government interested in maximizing tax revenues when the mne has private information about its benefits of controlling the enterprise it is shown that the optimal mechanism involves restricting the mnes ownership of the enterprise and setting a ceiling on the transfer price of an input that the mne provides that is above the known production cost of the input for low realizations of the benefits of control the mne transfers control to a domestic partner while for high realizations it retains control

multinational firms heterogeneity in tax responsiveness the role of transfer pricing in this paper we show that the ability of multinational firms to manipulate transfer prices affects the tax sensitivity of foreign direct investment fdi we offer a model of international capital allocation where firms are heterogeneous in their ability to manipulate transfer prices perhaps paradoxically we show that the ability to shift profits can make parent companies investment more sensitive to host country tax rates as long as investors expect fiscal authorities to use price and profit detection methods we then offer a comprehensive empirical study to test our predictions in the case of japanese fdi we exploit the finding that the unobservable ability to manipulate transfer prices is correlated with whole ownership of affiliates and r d expenditure based on country parent firm and sector characteristics we estimate an investment equation on a sample of 3 614 japanese affiliates in 49 emerging countries we obtain a greater semi elasticity of investment to the statutory tax rate in affiliates that are wholly owned and that have r d intensive parents we interpret these results as indirect evidence that abusive transfer pricing is one of the determinants of fdi activity

political influence and the dynamic consistency of policy garfinkel department of economics university of fornia 3151 social science plaza irvine ca 92697 lee artment of economics university of california 3151 soscience plaza irvine ca 92697 and international monfund 700 19th street nw washington dc 20431 we k without implicating avinash dixit amihai glazer chel grossman luisa lambertini stergios skaperdas an ymous referee and seminar participants at the university alifornia los angeles california state universityerton and the 1998 winter meetings of the econometociety for helpful comments on previous drafts of this r which had been circulated under the title political ipline and the dynamic consistency of policy the s expressed in this paper are those of the authors and ld not be attributed to the international monetary fund see torsten persson and guido tabellini 1990 for a ul survey of this literature

determinants of the foreign equity share of international joint ventures abstract due to host government restrictions a multinational corporation is required to form a joint venture with a local partner rather than set up a wholly owned subsidiary both parties to the joint venture simultaneously decide their respective equity shares and the time to exercise an irreversible investment project via nash bargaining since the multinational corporation has a cost advantage over its local partner it will therefore hold a share larger than its relative bargaining power however if its cost advantage is less significant uncertainty is greater or the cost of exercising the investment option is increasing over time at a lower rate the multinational firm will hold a smaller share and will also be more hesitant as regards exercising the investment option

multinational firms and government revenues abstract underinvoicing of intrafirm exports by a multinational firm mnf can increase the exporting country s revenue overinvoicing can increase the importing country s revenue when its tariff rate is higher than its profit tax rate and both countries revenues may change in the same direction transfer pricing increases the mnf s global tax burden unambiguously when the home profit tax rate is not smaller than the foreign and the mnf overinvoices and can increase it in other cases this last result arises when increase in the level of intrafirm trade which accompanies transfer pricing and or non wholly owned subsidiary are considered

markets and regulatory hold up problems abstract many regulatory programs such as environmental regulation are effective only if firms make irreversible investments that reduce the cost of compliance a firm potentially subject to regulation may therefore behave strategically by not investing thereby forcing the regulator to void the proposed regulation we show that such incentives which resemble a hold up problem may not be overcome when government s only tool is the imposition of an emissions tax the hold up problem can be overcome by the issuance of tradeable permits a time consistent equilibrium exists with all firms investing and the government imposing regulations even if no permits are traded and their market price is low indeed an observation of no trade may indicate that pollution abatement is great

tariff jumping and joint ventures it is well known that high tariffs tend to induce foreign direct investment fdi by encouraging the investors to jump the tariff wall this paper examines the economic interaction among tariffs fdi and international joint ventures ijv we show that in the presence of a strong local competitor even if opening a fully owned subsidiary is not profitable to a foreign firm the foreign firm may still enter the host country market through ijv however ijv is not profitable for sufficiently high tariff rates hence we argue that liberal trade policies may attract foreign investments through the formation of joint ventures