state characteristics and the location of foreign direct investment within the united states a conditional logit model of the location decision of foreign firms investing in manufacturing facilities in the united states is developed and estimated the authors results for 1981 83 indicate that states with higher per capita incomes and higher densities of manufacturing activity attracted relatively more foreign direct investment in addition higher wages deterred foreign direct investment while higher unemployment rates attracted it surprisingly higher unionization rates were associated with increased foreign direct investment overall higher taxes deterred foreign direct investment however more extensive transportation infrastructures and larger promotional expenditures were associated with increased foreign direct investment copyright 1991 by mit press

organisational and spatial determinants of the multi unit firm evidence from the french industry galliano d and soulie n organizational and spatial determinants of the multi unit firm evidence from french industry regional studies this article aims to analyse the factors internal characteristics spatial and industrial environments that determine the existence of multi unit firms and the intensity of their organizational fragmentation at a national scale the empirical models are based on individual data on all french industrial firms collected by the french national institute of statistics the results show the importance of internal characteristics scale economies specific assets as research and development and advertising skill level etc in organizational choice they also highlight the major role played by multi location and by the spatial profile of the firms on the intensity of their fragmentation galliano d and soulie n

home sourcing and closer value chains in mature economies the case of spanish manufacturing this paper offers a novel perspective on manufacturing home sourcing we present evidence that home sourcing occurs in the context of a new competitive environment where the relative importance of scale economies versus variety is altered and a recoupling of innovation and production within industrial ecosystems becomes desirable we look at the determinants of manufacturing home sourcing we find that r d intensive businesses with core non standardized products are more likely to switch sourcing of components to the home economy from abroad our findings provide evidence in favour of increasing trends towards closer value chains for knowledge intensive production suggesting that the possibilities for and potential impact of home sourcing have not been fully recognised as pathways to industrial and economic renewal in mature economies the implications for industrial policy are to focus on the resilience of existing national industrial ecosystems and their attractiveness and ability to integrate incoming business opportunities

jockeying for position what it means and why it matters to regional development policy when places compete malecki e j 2004 jockeying for position what it means and why it matters to regional development policy when places compete regional studies38 1093 1112 the realization that places compete for investment has expanded in recent years to encompass competition among places for the attention of migrants tourists and media glow as well as investment the most competitive places have been multidimensional in their attractions and have made the transition to the knowledge based economy the latest priority is being placed on attracting mobile workers and mobile investment creative workers are the core of the knowledge economy and of its geographies such as intelligent places and learning regions knowledge metrics innovation indices and report cards are increasingly common each seemingly developed to sort the list of places in a different order lists or league tables of the best places for business to live retire and visit are key features of economies and societies whose factors of success

patterns of internationalisation of corporate technology location vs home country advantages given the trends towards increasing globalisation of markets and of production the globalisation of technology remains a subject of considerable interest to analysts and policy makers in the 1990s this paper provides some new empirical observations for debate and discussion on the patterns of technological activities of large firms outside their home countries it is based on a systematic analysis of the us patenting activities of 220 of the most internationalised firms in terms of their technology in the 1990s although firms are active outside their home countries in the high technology fields such as computers pharmaceuticals telecommunications image and sound and materials quite a sizeable proportion of their foreign activities are concerned with process and machinery technologies moreover a comparison of the technological advantage of the company at home and the advantage of the location shows that in a large majority of cases firms tend to locate their technology abroad in their core areas where they are strong at home these results suggest that adapting products and processes and materials to suit foreign markets and providing technical support to off shore manufacturing plants remain major factors underlying the internationalisation of technology they are also consistent with the notion that firms are increasingly engaging in small scale activities to monitor and scan new technological developments in centres of excellence in foreign countries within their areas of existing strength however there is little evidence to suggest that even these most internationalised firms routinely go abroad to compensate for their weakness at home

firm specific effects on location decisions of foreign direct investment in china s logistics industry hong j 2007 firm specific effects on location decisions of foreign direct investment in china s logistics industry regional studies 41 673 683 this paper uses conditional logit models to investigate firms specific effects on location decisions of foreign direct investment in china s logistics industry based on a recent census database the empirical results indicate that the importance of some location factors varies with firm characteristics small logistics firms are more sensitive to labour cost than large companies compared with independent firms branch companies are less responsive to local market demand and labour factors wholly owned foreign firms prefer cities with cheap labour while joint ventures put more emphasis on local market demand investors from hong kong macao and taiwan value local market size while those from foreign countries emphasize cheap labour and convenient airway transport location determinants also vary over time and differ across sectors implications for resear

economic geography and the location of tncs financial and professional service fdi to the usa this paper attempts to examine theoretically and empirically the explanatory power of concepts drawn from economic geography for the explanation of the location of tncs it combines concepts from economic geography and international business theories in a model that seeks to explain the location of transnational corporations tncs and tests the model on financial and professional service fdi to the us the findings suggest a need to extend the conventional location model of international business by acknowledging the processes taking place among firms located in geographic proximity

safe nests in global nets internationalization and appropriability of r d in wireless telecom this paper documents the case of the wireless telecom industry to bring new empirical evidence to the debate on the internationalization of research and development r d activities us patent statistics on the four industry leaders ericsson motorola nokia and qualcomm illustrate the growing trend of the internationalization of r d over the 1990s yet we show that the most critical r d projects related to the development of wireless standards remain homebound the paper then leverages qualitative data collected through interviews with informed managers to provide a fresh interpretation for the homeboundedness of critical industrial r d the stickiness of core r d projects to domestic locations is related not only to organizational inertia and the unripe maturation of subsidiaries as suggested by prior literature but particularly to the headquarters centralization of intellectual property ip management which offers a high level of appropriability of r d results the unequal distribution of appropriability across corporate r d networks is at the base of the formation of safe nests domestic r d centers that are sheltered from the forces of globalization because they offer a desirable setting for the exploitation of technologies deriving from a stronger coordination of inventive activities with the management of ip

an extra year to learn english early grade retention and the human capital development of english learners abstract in this study we use microdata from 12 florida county level school districts to examine the effects of early grade retention on the short medium and long term outcomes of english learners in a regression discontinuity design we find that retention in the third grade coupled with instructional support substantially improves the english skills of these students reducing the time to proficiency by half and decreasing the likelihood of taking a remedial english course in middle school by one third grade retention also roughly doubles the likelihood of taking an advanced course in math and science in middle school and triples the likelihood of taking college credit bearing courses in high school for english learners we do not find any adverse effects of the policy on disciplinary problems or absences among english learners

does longer compulsory schooling affect mental health evidence from a british reform abstract in this paper we examine whether longer compulsory schooling has a causal effect on mental health exploiting a 1972 reform which raised the minimum school leaving age from age 15 to 16 in great britain using a regression discontinuity design we find that the reform did not improve mental health we provide evidence that extending the duration of compulsory schooling impacts mental health through channels other than increased educational attainment we argue that these effects may mitigate or offset the health returns to increased educational attainment

location and the multinational enterprise a neglected factor this article first traces the changing world economic scenario for international business over the past two decades and then goes on to examine its implications for the location of foreign direct investment and multinational enterprise activity it suggests that many of the explanations of the 1970s and early 1980s need to be modified as firm specific assets have become mobile across natural boundaries a final section of the article examines the dynamic interface between the value added activities of multinational enterprises in different locations

on the growth of foreign affiliates multinational plant networks joint ventures and flexibility we take a flexibility perspective to analyse employment growth in a large sample of japanese manufacturing affiliates in nine asian countries during the years leading up to and into the asian financial crisis 1995 1999 we find that joint ventures are less flexible than wholly owned affiliates in responding to changing environmental conditions in the focal country and underperform in high growth environments multinational enterprises mnes use the flexibility created by their multinational plant network to adjust affiliate employment in response to labour cost changes in other countries in which they operate plants however no evidence was found that the presence of joint ventures in multinational plant networks reduces this network flexibility our findings suggest that more research is needed on the heterogeneous responses of mnes and their affiliates to changing economic environments

prior to reshoring a duration analysis of foreign manufacturing ventures this paper throws light on the determinants of the duration of manufacturing offshore experiences by us and european firms prior to reshoring by applying survival analysis to a dataset of 249 offshoring experiences terminated with a relocation to the home country region we estimate the effects of different groups of survival determinants results highlight that contextual factors such as the industry the home country the host country and the size of the firm significantly affect the duration of offshoring experiences the likelihood of termination is in fact higher for the electronics and automotive industries for small firms for firms headquartered in europe and for offshoring to asia the analysis of the motivations for reshoring shows that quality issues experienced offshore emerge as the key factor giving rise to shorter offshore stays based on these empirical findings a set of testable propositions is developed in particular we conjecture that the likelihood of termination of offshore manufacturing and the return to the home country may be accelerated by technology based industries small firm sizes shrinking cost differentials and the psychic distance between home and host country the organizational archetypes and quality related motivations

sargan s wage equation a theoretical and empirical reconstruction sargan s 1964 wage equation is respecified within the feedback control framework to which it belongs and confronted with quaterly british data the amended version clearly out performs the original and a version estimated over 1967 i 1974 iv yields acceptable predictions through 1975 i 1977 iv

inference in regression discontinuity designs with a discrete running variable we consider inference in regression discontinuity designs when the running variable only takes a moderate number of distinct values in particular we study the common practice of using confidence intervals cis based on standard errors that are clustered by the running variable as a means to make inference robust to model misspecification lee and card 2008 we derive theoretical results and present simulation and empirical evidence showing that these cis do not guard against model misspecification and that they have poor coverage properties we therefore recommend against using these cis in practice we instead propose two alternative cis with guaranteed coverage properties under easily interpretable restrictions on the conditional expectation function

mnes as border crossing multi location enterprises the role of discontinuities in geographic space spurred by the classic work of dunning mne location has become the focus of a growing body of research in the field in this paper we argue that international business ib research examining the spatial dimension has serious weaknesses stemming from its traditional assumption of the country as the location unit of analysis while border crossing remains the key research context of ib placing it within a general spatial framework that recognizes both international and subnational spatial heterogeneity opens up vast new vistas for research analyzing mnes as border crossing multi location enterprises allows the researcher to distinguish between discrete border effects and continuous distance effects and undertake a more fine grained analysis of location within such analysis national borders may appear as qualitative discontinuities in space that is points at which spatial heterogeneity changes abruptly however subnational spatial heterogeneity is often the characteristic that drives firm strategy as mnes decide to locate in particular agglomerations and not at random locations within a country the complex firms that ib scholars study typically include multiple units within the same country so that a complete analysis requires considering both subnational distance effects as well as international border effects

entry through the narrow door the costs of just failing high stakes exams abstract in many countries important thresholds in examinations act as a gateway to higher levels of education and or improved employment prospects this paper examines the consequences of just failing a particularly important high stakes national examination taken at the end of compulsory schooling in england it uses unique administrative data including full information on both initial and regraded exam marks to show that students of the same ability have significantly different educational trajectories depending on whether they just pass or fail this exam three years later students who just fail to achieve the required threshold have a lower probability of entering an upper secondary high level academic or vocational track and of starting tertiary education those who fail to pass the threshold are also more likely to drop out of education by age 18 without some form of employment the moderately high effects of just passing or failing to pass the threshold in this high stakes exam has high potential long term consequences for those affected

effects of economic incentives in the american film industry an ecological approach abstractus states have offered billions of dollars in film industry incentives but despite the popularity of these incentives the effects of these investments are unclear this study adopts an ecological framework and tests the hypothesis that film incentives are effective when they produce changes in the composition of organizational communities the results of longitudinal linear mixed effects models centred around incentive introduction in each state show that above the impact of their dollar value the simple presence of economic incentives organizational diversity and the presence of dominant organizational populations are associated with increases in filming employment and new establishments theoretical and policy implications are discussed

how much does subnational region matter to foreign subsidiary performance evidence from fortune global 500 corporations investment in china what explains the heterogeneity of foreign subsidiary performance previous studies have emphasized the importance of industry corporate parent and home country effects on the variation of foreign subsidiary performance building on recent international business and economic geography research this study examines the extent to which subnational region effects can also explain such performance variation we empirically decompose the variance of the performance of fortune global 500 corporations subsidiaries in china during 1998 2006 results show that not only are subnational region effects statistically significant in explaining the variation of subsidiary performance but their interactions with industry corporate parent and home country effects are also significant and economically important we further show that subnational region effects tend to be stronger in the period prior to china s wto accession and in the country s less developed subnational regions our findings highlight the importance of considering both the direct and indirect roles of subnational region in shaping firms strategy and performance in international business research

does early access to pension wealth improve health we examine the health impacts of early access to public pension wealth by exploiting a unique policy in singapore allowing individuals to withdraw a proportion of their pension savings after their 55th birthday for the identification we employ a regression discontinuity design by comparing individuals before and after their 55th birthday to address anticipated and lagged health impacts we adopt the donut regression discontinuity approach using nationally representative monthly panel data we find that early access to pension wealth improves self reported overall health

the long run effects of reducing early school tracking abstract this paper studies the effects of a french detracking reform on individuals long run education and labor market outcomes the reform delayed the age at which students were separated into vocational and general education by two years from age 11 to 13 the assignment of students to different types of education at age 11 was instead replaced by ability grouping whereby students followed a common general education curriculum but were divided into different classrooms based on their academic achievement using a regression discontinuity design i find that the reform raised individuals level of education and increased their wages by 6 at ages 40 to 45 these effects are concentrated among men and individuals from low socioeconomic backgrounds however the reform solely benefited individuals whose parents were born in france as it did not significantly affect children of immigrants educational and labor market outcomes

government contracts and contractor behavior the u s government embraces the concepts of privatization and market competition but the realm of contracting shows that it has not always been able to put its principles into practice although the contracting system is supposed to be open and competitive in recent years the government has often awarded contracts with little or no competitive bidding has chosen to award mostly cost plus type contracts that force the government to assume more of the risk and lacked efficiency in monitoring and overseeing private contractors while the number and value of contracts have increased the workforce to oversee these contracts has been reduced preventing the government from adequately enforcing compliance with the contractors and the government has not made use of past performance evaluations in its contracting system private contractors that do business with the u s government are for the most part well established firms with ample resources and inside contacts many contracts are still being awarded on preferential treatment and to the larger and well established contractors

location and the multinational enterprise in the early development of the international business field the focus of attention moved from the country level to the firm level and interest in location issues declined more recently firm based research has itself become increasingly concerned with the study of firm location interactions when examining two way knowledge flows or spillovers between multinational enterprises mnes and other actors in specific locations the diversity or heterogeneity of firms matters as does the diversity of locational environments the localization of knowledge sources depends on mne group level strategies for growth and organizational decentralization on subsidiary level evolution towards local competence creating efforts and on the development of suitable business networks within locations mnes now have a greater potential to benefit from a synergistic locational portfolio of complementary sources of knowledge the locational composition of the international network for knowledge sourcing of a given mne depends upon the extent of institutional compatibility between the locations in which the mne is active this compatibility between locations in turn affects the capacity of the mne to become an insider in local business systems and to influence the local institutional environment

the social value of health insurance results from ghana this paper uses the roll out of the national health insurance in ghana to assess the cushioning effect of coverage on the financial consequences of health shocks and resulting changes in coping behaviors the analysis finds a strong reduction in medical expenditures preventing households from cutting non food consumption and causing a decrease in the volume of received remittances as well as the labor supply of healthy adult household members moreover the paper presents evidence that the insurance scheme reduced the likelihood that households experiencing a health shock pulled their children out of school to put them to work avoidance of such costly coping mechanisms is potentially an important part of the social value of formal health insurance

coming home and not moving in examining reshoring firms subnational location choices in the united states the relation between firm characteristics i e size and domestic location choice i e home state versus other of reshoring firms contingent on place i e labour cost innovation intensity