a simple framework for international monetary policy analysis abstract we study the international monetary policy design problem within an optimizing two country sticky price model where each country faces a short run tradeoff between output and inflation the model is sufficiently tractable to solve analytically we find that in the nash equilibrium the policy problem for each central bank is isomorphic to the one it would face if it were a closed economy gains from cooperation arise however that stem from the impact of foreign economic activity on the domestic marginal cost of production while under nash central banks need only adjust the interest rate in response to domestic inflation under cooperation they should respond to foreign inflation as well in either scenario flexible exchange rates are desirable

operating flexibility global manufacturing and the option value of a multinational network the multinational corporation is a network of activities located in different countries the value of this network derives from the opportunity to benefit from uncertainty through the coordination of subsidiaries which are geographically dispersed we model this coordination as the operating flexibility to shift production between two manufacturing plants located in different countries a stochastic dynamic programming model treats explicitly this flexibility as equivalent to owning an option the value of which is dependent upon the real exchange rate the model is extended to analyze hysteresis effects and within country growth options we show that the management of across border coordination has led to changes in the heuristic rules used for performance evaluation and transfer pricing

tracking the new economy using growth theory to detect changes in trend productivity abstract the acceleration of productivity after 1995 prompted a debate over whether the economy s underlying growth rate would remain high in this paper we draw on growth theory to identify variables other than productivity namely consumption and labor compensation to help estimate trend productivity growth we treat that trend as a common factor with two regimes high and low growth our analysis picks up striking evidence of a return in 1997 to the high growth regime nearly 25 years after a switch from high to low growth we find that both the common factor and regime switching aspects of the model are important for identifying changes in trend productivity and also show that the trend breaks are more difficult to detect with per capita as opposed to per hour based data because of persistent labor supply shifts finally we argue that our methodology is effective in detecting changes in trend in real time in the case of the 1990s the methodology would have signaled the regime switch by 1999 or within roughly six quarters of when it occurred according to the full sample

optimal monetary policy in a small open economy with home bias we analyze optimal monetary policy in a small open economy characterized by home bias in consumption peculiar to our framework is the application of a ramseytype analysis to a model of the recent open economy new keynesian literature we show that home bias in consumption is a su cient condition for inducing the monetary policy maker of an open economy to deviate from a strategy of strict markup stabilization and contemplate some optimal degree of exchange rate stabilization we focus on the optimal setting of policy both in the case of rms setting prices one period in advance and in a gradual fashion subject to adjustment costs while the rst setup allows us to analytically highlight home bias as an independent source of equilibrium

understanding corporate coherence theory and evidence abstract multiproduct firms are perceived to be coherent in their scope yet there is no strong theoretical foundations to explain coherence in modern industrial organization theory this paper shows that as u s manufacturing firms grow more diverse they maintain a constant level of coherence between neighboring activities this finding runs counter to the idea that firms with many activities are generally more incoherent a framework is then presented which appeals to the nature of enterprise learning path dependencies and the nature of the selection environment to explain the ubiquity of coherent diversifiers

uncovering financial market expectations of inflation this paper seeks to uncover market expectations of inflation from the joint dynamics of nominal interest rates and observed inflation i postulate 1 the existence of a stable vector autoregression in unobserved variables and 2 efficient financial markets the estimation procedure requires no further structural assumptions the econometrician need not observe all the information used by agents in forming forecasts or all the variables that influence real interest rates i find no empirical evidence that economic recessions are correlated with inflation forecast errors however postwar recessions are associated with ex ante real interest rates that are twice the postwar average

monetary policy under alternative asset market structures the case of a small open economy can the structure of asset markets change the way monetary policy should be conducted following a linear quadratic approach the present paper addresses this question in a new keynesian small open economy framework our results reveal that the configuration of asset markets significantly affects optimal monetary policy and the performance of standard policy rules in particular when comparing complete and incomplete markets the ranking of policy rules is entirely reversed and so are the policy prescriptions regarding the optimal level of exchange rate volatility

optimal monetary policy exchange rate misalignments and incomplete financial markets abstract recent literature shows that when international financial trade is restricted to autarky or a single bond there are internal and external welfare trade offs that imply optimal monetary policy in principle deviates from inflation targeting in order to offset real exchange rate misalignments this paper develops a more realistic model of incomplete markets where there is international trade in multiple assets the analysis shows that the presence of multiple assets creates a potentially powerful interaction between monetary policy and household portfolio allocation this interaction is by definition not present when there is financial autarky or a single tradeable bond and this paper shows that the interaction with portfolio allocation can imply that optimal monetary policy generates a quantitatively much more significant stabilisation of the real exchange rate gap than implied by simpler models of financial market incompleteness

assets and actions firm specific factors in the internationalization of u s internet firms by providing a nearly instant connection among parties at opposite corners of the world and enabling a variety of commercial exchanges the internet emerged as the technology expected to create a truly global market space internet firms faced the challenge of capitalizing on this development in this paper we examine what firm specific factors are associated with the propensity of pure u s based internet firms to enhance their international presence on the internet by developing country specific websites despite the assertion that all internet firms are born global our findings show that the pursuit of internationalization by internet firms is related to the levels of their intangible assets and strategic activity two types of intangible assets reputation and website traffic are positively related to the degree of internationalization so are the levels of competitive and cooperative activity and the interaction effects between reputation and competitive and cooperative activity these findings suggest that ideas from both resource based theory and research on competitive dynamics can contribute to understanding the internationalization of internet firms

utilizing the broader agency perspective for studying headquarters subsidiary relations in multinational companies the nature of global business today increases the complexity of multinational companies and highlights the challenges of managing headquarters subsidiary hq sub relationships we identify key unresolved issues in hq sub relations including closing the gap between headquarters expectations and subsidiary performance managing the nested hierarchical relationships across multiple organizational layers and aligning these relationships across diverse subunits embedded in different social contexts we propose that agency theory particularly its more recent progressions can advance our understanding of these issues and we offer a perspective to guide such research we discuss several research implications of the static bilateral static multilateral dynamic and social and contextual streams of agency theory

an ols approach to computing ramsey equilibria in medium scale macroeconomic models abstract this note describes a general procedure for solving for the steady state and the dynamics implied by the ramsey equilibrium of medium scale macroeconomic models the procedure yields an exact numerical solution for the steady state and second order accurate dynamics it introduces a novel projection based approach to calculating exact solutions to the steady state of ramsey equilibria

monetary policy and exchange rate volatility in a small open economy we lay out a small open economy version of the calvo sticky price model and show how the equilibrium dynamics can be reduced to a simple representation in domestic inflation and the output gap we use the resulting framework to analyse the macroeconomic implications of three alternative rulebased policy regimes for the small open economy domestic inflation and cpi based taylor rules and an exchange rate peg we show that a key difference among these regimes lies in the relative amount of exchange rate volatility that they entail we also discuss a special case for which domestic inflation targeting constitutes the optimal policy and where a simple second order approximation to the utility of the representative consumer can be derived and used to evaluate the welfare losses associated with the suboptimal rules

price stability in open economies this paper studies the conditions under which price stability is the optimal policy in a two country open economy model with imperfect competition and price stickiness special conditions on the levels of country specific distortionary taxation and the intratemporal and intertemporal elasticities of substitution need to be satisfied these restrictions apply to both cooperative and non cooperative settings most importantly we show that cooperative and non cooperative solutions do not coincide despite market completeness and producer currency pricing in this framework our analysis suggests a role for international policy coordination

commodity trade and international risk sharing how much do financial markets matter abstract this paper evaluates the social gains from international risk sharing in some simple general equilibrium models with output uncertainty a simulation model calibrated to selected moments of u s and japanese data estimates the incremental loss from a ban on international portfolio diversification to be on the order of 0 20 percent of output per year even the theoretical gains from asset trade may disappear under alternative sets of assumptions on preferences and technology the paper argues that the small magnitude of potential trade gains may help explain the apparently inconsistent findings of empirical studies on the degree of international capital mobility

a welfare based analysis of international monetary policy spillovers at the zero lower bound we study the welfare effects of international monetary policy spillovers at the zero lower bound focusing on the effects of forward guidance in a large economy foreign on its smaller trading partner home in scenarios motivated by the global financial crisis we find that foreign forward guidance has an overall prosper thy neighbor effect on the home economy as long as it increases foreign welfare this finding holds under alternative assumptions about exchange rate pass through or the degree of international financial integration however foreign forward guidance may worsen the trade off between the stabilization objectives of home monetary policy

asset exploitation versus asset seeking implications for location choice of foreign direct investment from newly industrialized economies this study examined several hypotheses regarding the location choice of foreign direct investment from newly industrialized economies nies using a sample of 328 taiwanese firms in the analysis this study found that the firms motivations had a significant impact on the choice of their investment location developed countries vs less developed countries yet this impact was moderated by the capabilities that the firms possessed the results suggest that both asset exploitation and asset seeking aspects of investments are predictive of the nie firms location choice of investment

optimal monetary policy in open versus closed economies an integrated approach in clarida et al 1999 hereafter cgg we presented a normative analysis of monetary policy within a simple optimization based closedeconomy framework we derived the optimal policy rule and among other things characterized the gains from commitment also we made precise the implications for the kind of instrument feedback rule that a central bank should follow in practice in this paper we show how our analysis extends to the case of a small open economy openness complicates the problem of monetary management to the extent the central bank must take into account the impact of the exchange rate on real activity and inflation how to factor the exchange rate into the overall design of monetary policy accordingly becomes a central consideration here we show that under certain conditions the monetary policy design problem for the small open economy is isomorphic to the problem of the closed economy that we considered earlier hence all our qualitative results for the closed economy carry over to this case openness does affect the parameters of the model suggesting quantitative implications though the general form of the optimal interest rate feedback rule remains the same as in the closedeconomy case for example how aggressively a central bank should adjust the interest rate in response to inflationary pressures depends on the degree of openness in addition openness gives rise to an important distinction between domestic inflation and consumer price inflation as defined by the cpi to the extent that there is perfect exchange rate pass through we find that the central bank should target domestic inflation and allow the exchange rate to float despite the impact of the resulting exchangerate variability on the cpi kosuki aoki 1999 gali and tommaso monacelli 2000

subsidiary expansion contraction during times of economic crisis this paper compares two real options within country growth and across country operational flexibility to examine subsidiary expansion contraction during times of economic crisis specifically we examine how the real options orientations of individual subsidiaries interact with the general characteristics of multinational enterprise networks our main findings are that a economic crises can be detrimental for subsidiaries with stronger within country orientations and advantageous for those with stronger across country orientations and b network characteristics are not the sole determinants of subsidiary expansion contraction what really matters is how the real options orientations of individual subsidiaries mesh with the overall characteristics of the network they belong to

price stability with imperfect financial integration this paper studies whether the international monetary system can be affected by asymmetries in the cross country positions in the international financial markets i e the fact that some countries are large debtors while others are creditors an important channel that is explored is the interaction between international risk sharing and the stabilization role of monetary policy in each country the main finding is that the welfare costs of incomplete markets and the gains of deviating from a policy of price stability are increasing with the cross country asymmetries in the initial net international positions and in particular they become nonnegligible when the persistence of the shocks increases 1 of a permanent shift in steady state consumption for the welfare costs of incomplete markets and 0 2 for the gains of deviating from a policy of price stability when global imbalances become larger optimal monetary policy requires an increase in the volatilities of the real returns on assets and in particular of the nominal interest rates which should happen to be more correlated across countries

optimal monetary policy with international trade in intermediate inputs abstract this paper examines optimal monetary policy in a two country new keynesian model with international trade in intermediate inputs we derive the loss function of a cooperative monetary policymaker and find that the optimal monetary policy must target intermediate goods price inflation rates final goods price inflation rates final goods output gaps and relative price gaps we use the welfare loss under the optimal monetary policy as a benchmark to evaluate the welfare implications of three taylor type monetary policy rules a main finding is that the degree of price stickiness at the stage of intermediate goods production is a key factor to determine which policy rule should be followed specifically when the degree of price stickiness at the stage of intermediate goods production is high the policymaker should follow intermediate goods ppi based taylor rule whereas cpi based taylor rule should be followed when the degree of price stickiness at the stage of intermediate goods production is intermediate or low

drift and breaks in labor productivity abstract we use endogenous break tests and the stock watson tvp mub methodology to investigate changes in the equilibrium rate of growth of labor productivity in the u s the eurozone the u k australia and japan since wwii results for the u s well capture the conventional wisdom of a golden era of high productivity growth the 1950s and 1960s a marked deceleration starting from the beginning of the 1970s and a strong growth resurgence starting from mid 1990s results for the eurozone point towards a deceleration since the early 1980s with the equilibrium rate of growth of output per hour falling to 0 9 in 2004 4

cultural differences mne learning abilities and the effect of experience on subsidiary mortality in a dissimilar culture evidence from korean mnes in a departure from prior studies presuming a beneficial experience effect in foreign direct investment fdi the present paper examines the conditions under which fdi experience may actually harm subsequent subsidiaries we argue that multinational enterprises mnes may draw erroneous inferences and learn incorrectly from their early expansions when new to a dissimilar culture because their learning abilities are eroded by cultural differences we posit that the characteristics of an mne s international expansion including scope pace rhythm and entry mode moderate this negative experience effect by influencing the mne s learning ability in foreign cultures using a data set of fdis by south korean mnes between 1990 and 2006 we find a positive relationship between subsidiary mortality and experience when an mne has a low level of experience in a dissimilar culture this relationship is weaker if the mne s prior fdi has been dispersed across different cultures is stronger if it expanded internationally at a fast pace and becomes negative once the mne has accumulated a high level of experience in the host culture we conclude that when expanding into dissimilar cultures mnes must establish mechanisms to mitigate incorrect learning and reexamine the correctness of inferences drawn from past experience before applying them

investment in new foreign subsidiaries under receding perception of uncertainty research on foreign direct investment has focused considerable attention on the moment of market entry but less on the dynamics of investment in the post entry phase this paper centres the influence of uncertainty on investment and develops a growth options model to explain the sequence of investment in new foreign subsidiaries in a learning process that starts at entry investors perceive receding levels of uncertainty and shift their reason for investment from option values towards net present values the findings of a panel study of 634 german subsidiaries support the propositions and reveal the potential of the real options approach to improve the understanding of internationalisation processes

do the ecb and the fed really need to cooperate optimal monetary policy in a two country world abstract a two country model with monopolistic competition and price stickiness is employed to investigate the implications for macroeconomic stability and the welfare properties of three international policy arrangements a cooperative b non cooperative and c monetary union i characterize the conditions under which there is scope for policy cooperation and quantify the costs of non cooperation and monetary union the non cooperative equilibrium may be suboptimal because of terms of trade spillover effects while monetary union may be suboptimal because of the sluggishness of relative prices both the costs of policy competition and of a monetary union are sensitive to the values assumed for the intertemporal and international demand elasticity and the degree of openness of the economy independently of the calibration scenario adopted the ecb has little to gain by coordinating with the fed

global implications of self oriented national monetary rules author s obstfeld maurice rogoff kenneth abstract it is well known that if international linkages are relatively small the potential gains to international monetary policy coordination are typically quite limited but what if goods and financial markets are tightly linked is it then problematic if countries unilaterally design their institutions for monetary stabilization are the stabilization gains from having separate currencies largely squandered in the absence of effective international monetary coordination we argue that under plausible assumptions the answer is no unless risk aversion is very high lack of coordination in rule setting is a second order problem compared to the overall gains from monetary policy stabilization

the quest for prosperity without inflation abstract in recent years activist monetary policy rules responding to inflation and the level of economic activity have been advanced as a means of achieving effective output stabilization without inflation advocates of such policies suggest that their flexibility may yield substantial stabilization benefits while avoiding the excesses of overzealous discretionary fine tuning such as is thought to characterize the experience of the 1960s and 1970s in this study i present evidence suggesting that these conclusions are misguided using an estimated model i show that when informational limitations are properly accounted for activist policies would not have averted the great inflation but instead would have resulted in worse macroeconomic performance than the actual historical experience the problem can be attributed in large part to the counterproductive reliance of these policies on the output gap the analysis suggests that the dismal economic outcomes of the great inflation may have resulted from an unfortunate pursuit of activist policies in the face of bad measurement specifically overoptimistic assessments of the output gap associated with the productivity slowdown of the late 1960s and early 1970s

learning from age difference interorganizational learning and survival in japanese foreign subsidiaries this paper extends research on experiential learning of foreign subsidiaries by exploring the temporal conditions under which a foreign subsidiary can benefit from the experience of its sister subsidiaries building upon organizational evolution and learning literature we propose that differences in entry timing among sister subsidiaries provide structural conditions that bound the opportunities for inter subsidiary learning we argue that different entry cohorts of sister subsidiaries are beneficial to a focal subsidiary as they provide non redundant complementary experience from their different operational stages and ignite the motivation to learn our empirical analysis of japanese foreign subsidiaries provides strong evidence that survival is enhanced by the experience of different entry cohorts of sister subsidiaries but not by that of similar cohorts qualitative evidence also shows that multiple channels of experience exchange across sister subsidiaries lead to actual learning we further show that the survival benefit derived from different cohorts is contingent on the level of environmental change as well as on the level of experience of the focal subsidiary and its parent firm our research highlights the importance of temporal heterogeneity in the internationalization process and offers implications for the temporal strategy of multinational companies

on the benefits of a monetary union does it pay to be bigger this paper revisits the question of the appropriate domain of a currency area using a new keynesian open economy model in which the world is split into two areas each framed as a continuum of small open regions we show that the adoption of a common currency like the euro can be beneficial for the members of the monetary union since the spill over effects generated by the inflationary policies of the small open economies are likely to outweigh the costs of not tailoring monetary policy to country specific shocks we also show that while the enlargement of the monetary union to another group of small open economies can bring about welfare gains for all countries involved monetary integration of two large economies such as the euro area and the u s will not these findings can help to rationalize the process of the creation and enlargement of multi country currency areas like the eurozone

the new econometrics of structural change dating breaks in u s labor productivity we have seen the emergence of three major innovations in the econometrics of structural change in the past fifteen years 1 tests for a structural break of unknown timing 2 estimation of the timing of a structural break and 3 tests to distinguish unit roots from broken time trends these three innovations have dramatically altered the face of applied time series econometrics in this paper we review these three innovations and illustrate their application through an empirical assessment of u s labor productivity in the manufacturing durables sector

when and where does foreign direct investment generate positive spillovers a meta analysis local firms may attract productivity spillovers from foreign investors yet these vary with local firms awareness capability and motivation to react to foreign entry in consequence spillovers vary across countries at different levels of economic development we apply competitive dynamics theory to analyze these contextual moderators of spillovers and test hypotheses thus derived in a meta analysis of the empirical literature on spillovers our analysis suggests a curvilinear relationship between spillovers and the host country s level of development in terms of income institutional framework and human capital

the role of path dependency and managerial intentionality a perspective on international business research several decades of research in the field of international business have advanced various theories and studies on the internationalization of firms our assessment of the literature on internationalization shows that the focus has been primarily on path dependency and learning based aspects of internationalization while managerial intentionality and the possibility of managers making deliberate strategic choices towards further internationalization have not been very prominent in the ib literature we argue that internationalization paths and processes should be approached as a joint outcome of management intentionality and experience based learning in other words managers are assumed to have the ability and the intention to influence the evolutionary paths of the firm we derive a future research agenda that calls for the pursuit of this promising and emergent research stream moreover we develop a model integrating managerial intentionality knowledge experience and other factors institutional and selection forces to explain heterogeneous outcomes of internationalization positions paths and processes

explaining the swollen middle why most transactions are a mix of market and hierarchy why are firms sometimes more efficient than markets at organizing transactions why are most transactions arrayed neither at the pure market nor at the pure hierarchy end of the continuum but rather in the swollen middle incorporating features of both market and hierarchy why don t firms make greater use of price incentives this paper addresses these three questions by developing a model of the choice of institution one key building block is the distinction between organizing methods hierarchy and the price system and institutions firms and markets hierarchy and the price system are two distinct methods for organizing transactions each with particular costs and benefits markets and firms are institutions which use one or both of these methods although markets predominantly use prices and firms rely principally on hierarchy there is not a one to one correspondence between prices and markets or between hierarchy and firms indeed the paper argues that it is generally more efficient to use a mix of both methods than to specialize in either the paper focuses on the enforcement properties of prices and hierarchy hierarchy controls individuals directly by constraining their behavior by imposing behavior constraints while prices do it indirectly by measuring their outputs through price constraints under hierarchy individuals receive a salary to do as told while self employed individuals governed by the price system are rewarded on the basis of their output each system has its own biases using prices maximizes effort minimizes shirking but incites individuals to inflate the price and or reduce the quality of their output it encourages cheating relying on hierarchy results in the opposite bias under hierarchy individuals are not paid in function of their output but instead are rewarded for following directives they have thus strong incentives to minimize effort to shirk unless properly supervised but being paid a fixed sum to follow orders they have few incentives to cheat hence the price system experiences low shirking but potentially high cheating costs while hierarchy faces low cheating but high shirking costs organizing costs are the sum of shirking and cheating costs any given transaction will be organized by the mix of price and hierarchy i e by the mix of price and behavior constraints that minimizes organizing costs a transaction will be organized within a firm if the reduction in cheating costs achieved by replacing price constraints by behavior constraints exceeds the resulting increase in shirking costs and by the market in the opposite case the paper shows that cheating and shirking costs increase more than proportionately as one concentrates in either pure price or behavior constraints hence using a mix of both methods generally minimizes the sum of cheating and shirking costs this explains why most transactions exhibit features of both markets and hierarchy the paper shows clearly the tradeoff involved between price and behavior constraints it explains the costs and benefits of using two types of price incentives in firms piecework and profit centers and predicts when they will be used

managing foreign subsidiaries agents of headquarters or an interdependent network in this study two different theoretical perspectives are used to develop sets of hypotheses regarding the mechanisms used to manage foreign subsidiaries of multinational corporations first agency theory serves as the basis for a model that predicts the use of monitoring mechanisms and incentive compensation then it is argued that these mechanisms are insufficient for managing subsidiaries characterized by high levels of intra firm international interdependence the management of which is critical to many of today s complex global firms a second set of hypotheses is argued linking international interdependence to several social control mechanisms primary and secondary data from u s based multinational corporations were used to test both sets of hypotheses the results indicate that agency theory although a useful foundation for studies of control within mncs is limited in its ability to explain fully the phenomenon of foreign subsidiary control however the model based on intra firm interdependence had much greater predictive ability copyright 2000 john wiley sons ltd

strategic investments by us firms in transition economies studies in international business have considered both theoretical and empirical analyses of investment strategies by multinational firms in transition economies however there is scant research on the impact of firm specific factors on the likelihood timing and mode of entry decisions in these economies we provide evidence on three aspects of the strategic decisions by us firms to invest in transition economies first we find that firms entering the region have greater advertising intensity and sales growth than industry peers that did not enter the region suggesting that market seeking considerations motivate expansion second we find that earlier entry is undertaken by firms with fewer industry competitors and higher sales growth suggesting that the desire to secure market share ahead of competitors motivates entry timing finally we investigate the choice of entry mode into the region and find that firms from concentrated industries are more likely to enter the region with high equity commitment consistent with market seeking motives we also find that firms incorporate the degree of progress with market oriented reforms in making decisions concerning entry timing and mode

optimal fiscal and monetary policy some recent results this paper studies the quantitative properties of fiscal and monetary policy in business cycle models in terms of fiscal policy optimal labor tax rates are virtually constant and optimal capital income tax rates are close to zero on average in terms of monetary policy the friedman rule is optimal nominal interest rates are zero and optimal monetary policy is activist in the sense that it responds to shocks to the economy

inflation stabilization and welfare the case of a distorted steady state this paper considers the appropriate stabilization objectives for monetary policy in a microfounded model with staggered price setting rotemberg and woodford 1997 and woodford 2002 have shown that under certain conditions a local approximation to the expected utility of the representative household in a model of this kind is related inversely to the expected discounted value of a conventional quadratic loss function in which each period s loss is a weighted average of squared deviations of inflation and an output gap measure from their optimal values zero however those derivations rely on an assumption of the existence of an output or employment subsidy that offsets the distortion due to the market power of monopolistically competitive price setters so that the steady state under a zero inflation policy involves an efficient level of output here we show how to dispense with this unappealing assumption so that a valid linear quadratic approximation to the optimal policy problem is possible even when the steady state is distorted to an arbitrary extent allowing for tax distortions as well as market power and when as a consequence it is necessary to take account of the effects of stabilization policy on the average level of output we again obtain a welfare theoretic loss function that involves both inflation and an appropriately defined output gap though the degree of distortion of the steady state affects both the weights on the two stabilization objectives and the definition of the welfare relevant output gap in the light of these results we reconsider the conditions under which complete price stability is optimal and find that they are more restrictive in the case of a distorted steady state we also consider the conditions under which pure randomization of monetary policy can be welfare improving and find that this is possible in the case of a sufficiently distorted steady state though the parameter values required are probably not empirically realistic

optimal fiscal and monetary policy in an economy without capital abstract this paper is concerned with the structure and time consistency of optimal fiscal and monetary policy in an economy without capital in a dynamic context optimal taxation means distributing tax distortions over time in a welfare maximizing way for a barter economy our main finding is that with debt commitments of sufficiently rich maturity structure an optimal policy if one exists is time consistent in a monetary economy the idea of optimal taxation must be broadened to include an inflation tax and we find that time consistency does not carry over an optimal inflation tax requires commitment by rules in a sense that has no counterpart in the dynamic theory of ordinary excise taxes the reason time consistency fails in a monetary economy is that nominal assets should from a welfare maximizing point of view always be taxed away via an immediate inflation in a kind of capital levy this emerges as a new possibility when money is introduced into an economy without capital

policy uncertainty and the sequence of entry by japanese firms 1980 1998 we extend the stages model of internationalization to incorporate a sophisticated consideration of temporal and cross national variation in the uncertainty of the policy environment using a sample of 6465 international expansions of 665 japanese manufacturing firms in 49 countries we develop arguments from internationalization and bargaining power perspectives to show how japanese firms manage policy uncertainty in host country environments through the within country sequencing of investments although a distribution to manufacturing entry sequence tends to prevail in countries with low levels of policy uncertainty as uncertainty in the policy environment increases initial entry by distribution is increasingly likely to be eschewed in favor of an initial entry by a joint venture manufacturing plant we suggest that this change in investment sequence occurs as firms shift from an emphasis on developing knowledge about local markets and consumers in low hazards markets to an international expansion strategy in uncertain policy environments that places knowledge development of the policy environment at the forefront of a firm s strategy

designing targeting rules for international monetary policy cooperation this study analyzes a two country dynamic general equilibrium model with nominal rigidities monopolistic competition and producer currency pricing a quadratic approximation to the utility of the consumers is derived and assumed as the policy objective function of the policymakers it is shown that only under special conditions there are no gains from cooperation and moreover that the paths of the exchange rate and prices in the constrained efficient solution depend on the kind of disturbance that affects the economy it might be the case either for fixed or floating exchange rates despite this result simple targeting rules that involve only targets for the growth of output and for both domestic gdp and cpi inflation rates can replicate the cooperative allocation

financial globalization and monetary policy abstract recent data show substantial increases in the size of gross external asset and liability positions the implications of these developments for optimal conduct of monetary policy are analyzed in a standard open economy model which is augmented to allow for endogenous portfolio choice the model shows that monetary policy takes on new importance due to its impact on nominal asset returns nevertheless the case for price stability as an optimal monetary rule remains in fact it is reinforced even without nominal price rigidities price stability is optimal because it enhances the risk sharing properties of nominal bonds

welfare and macroeconomic interdependence we develop a baseline model of monetary and fiscal transmission in interdependent economies the welfare effects of expansionary policies are related to monopolistic supply in production and monopoly power of a country in trade an unanticipated exchange rate depreciation can be beggar thyself rather than beggar thy neighbor as gains in domestic output are offset by deteriorating terms of trade smaller and more open economies are more prone to suffer from inflationary shocks larger economies benefit from moderate demand led expansions but may be worse off if policy makers attempt to close the output gap fiscal shocks are generally beggar thy neighbor in the long run in the short run they raise domestic demand at given terms of trade thus reducing the welfare benefits from monetary expansions analytical tractability makes our model uniquely suitable as a starting point to approach the recent new open economy macroeconomic literature

optimal simple and implementable monetary and fiscal rules welfare maximizing monetary and fiscal policy rules are studied in a model with sticky prices money and distortionary taxation the ramsey optimal policy is used as a point of comparison the main findings are the size of the inflation coefficient in the interest rate rule plays a minor role for welfare it matters only insofar as it affects the determinacy of equilibrium optimal monetary policy features a muted response to output interest rate rules that feature a positive response to output can lead to significant welfare losses the welfare gains from interest rate smoothing are negligible optimal fiscal policy is passive the optimal monetary and fiscal rule combination attains virtually the same level of welfare as the ramsey optimal policy

the dynamics of the liability of foreignness a global study of survival in financial services we study the impact of foreignness on survival in interbank currency trading worldwide over the period 1974 93 in particular we develop hypotheses on the behavior of the liability of foreignness over time and on the consequences of evolving sources of firm level competitive advantage on this liability we test these hypotheses on the population of 2667 market making trading rooms located in 47 countries worldwide that either existed in 1974 or entered the industry between 1974 and 1993 the results show that there is a liability of foreignness and that it changes over time further strategic and organizational factors such as the adoption of technology by these firms and their mode of internal control significantly influenced survival as did location related factors such as the intensity of local and foreign competition 1997 by john wiley sons ltd

an empirical analysis of the integration responsiveness framework in global industries in this study businesses competing in global industries were categorized into three groups according to the integration responsiveness framework for conceptualizing industry pressures confronting business competing internationally using this framework contextual conditions associated with each group were examined competitive attributes distinguishing each group were then identified to clarify alternate business level strategies for competing within a global industry context beyond providing additional insight into the nature of competition in global industries several broad extensions to the integration responsiveness framework are suggested

timing of investment and international expansion performance in china this study examines the multivariate and univariate performance effects of timing of fdi in an emerging economy at the business unit level a longitudinal analysis of industry wide firm specific data on fdi timing and foreign venture performance in china reveals that timing has a significant influence on overall as well as on individual aspects of venture performance it is observed that early entrants outperform late movers in terms of local market expansion and asset turnover whereas late movers are superior to early entrants with regard to risk reduction and accounting return during the initial period of international expansion factor analysis confirms that the importance of timing in affecting fdi decisions is as significant as that of internalization ownership or location factors

an evolutionary perspective on diversification and corporate restructuring entry exit and economic performance during 1981 89 this study proposes a theoretical perspective that firms engage in continuous search and selection activities in order to improve their knowledge base and thereby improve their performance this general framework is applied to the context of corporate evolution entry and exit activities are understood as search and selection undertaken by the firm to improve their performance one of the compelling features of this framework is that firms learn from their past entry experience and approach the next entry in a more focused and directed manner over time also firms acquire additional knowledge from each entry event while applying their existing knowledge base with a longitudinal 1981 89 data base on entry and exit activities of all publicly traded manufacturing firms in the united states this study shows that applicability of the firm s knowledge base plays an important role in predicting which businesses a firm enters or exits finns sequentially enter businesses of similar human resource profiles and firms are more likely to divest lines of business of different profiles corporate level analysis shows that such well directed entry and exit contribute to the improvement of a firm s profitability

does exchange rate variability matter for welfare a quantitative investigation of stabilization policies abstract this paper studies what degree of exchange rate stabilization is optimal for several types of open economies this is accomplished through a quantitative evaluation of optimal monetary policy rules in a two country sticky price model first a calibrated benchmark model with incomplete asset markets supports past conclusions from simpler models emphasizing inflation stabilization rather than exchange rate stabilization it also highlights that the utility gains from optimal stabilization policy are small second while an economy extended to include consumer habits implies greater sensitivity by households to consumption variability it has only minor effects on the benchmark conclusions and benefits finally these conclusions are altered under an alternative environment where international asset markets exhibit asymmetry in the form of original sin such countries can benefit from policies that aggressively stabilize the exchange rate with utility gains larger than the previous cases

trend breaks long run restrictions and contractionary technology improvements abstract structural vector autoregressions with long run restrictions are extraordinarily sensitive to low frequency correlations recent literature finds that the estimated effects of technology shocks are sensitive to how one treats hours per capita however after allowing for statistically and economically significant trend breaks in productivity results are much less sensitive hours fall when technology improves the issue is that the common high low high pattern of productivity growth and hours i e the low frequency correlation inevitably leads to a positive estimated response the trend breaks control for this correlation this example suggests a practical need for care in using long run restrictions

transforming disadvantages into advantages developing country mnes in the least developed countries we analyze the advantages and disadvantages of developing country multinational enterprises mnes in comparison with developed country mnes developing country mnes tend to be less competitive than their developed country counterparts partly because they suffer the disadvantage of operating in home countries with underdeveloped institutions we argue that this disadvantage can become an advantage when both types of mne operate in countries with difficult governance conditions because developing country mnes are used to operating in such conditions the empirical analysis shows that although developing country mnes rarely appear among the largest mnes in the world they are more prevalent among the largest foreign firms in the least developed countries ldcs especially in ldcs with poorer regulatory quality and lower control of corruption

causes of the difficulties in internationalization we study the causes of the difficulties faced by firms when they internationalize in search of new markets we build on the resource based theory to argue that the difficulties in internationalization can be separated into three main sets based on their relationship to advantage loss of advantage provided by resources transferred abroad creation of a disadvantage by resources transferred abroad and lack of complementary resources required to operate abroad in each set we further distinguish difficulties that are specific to a firm from those that are common to a set of firms we argue that only a few of the resulting types of difficulties of internationalization are exclusive to the cross border expansion and propose solutions that address the root cause of each type

interdependent behavior in foreign direct investment the multi level effects of prior entry and prior exit on foreign market entry this paper examines the interdependent foreign market entry decisions of multinational corporations mncs based on the argument that legitimacy and competition are two important forces in foreign market entry decisions we hypothesize that an mnc s market entry decisions are influenced by its own prior entry and prior exit decisions and those of other mncs we examine this general proposition at four levels of analysis the host country global industry an industry that spans host countries local industry an industry that is separately defined within each host country and parent firm level our analysis of a panel data of over 4000 market entry decisions that were made by japanese mncs shows that an mnc s market entry decision has a stronger inverted u shaped relationship with the prior entry and exit decisions of other mncs at the local industry level than the prior entry and exit decisions of other mncs at the host country and global industry levels we also find that both the prior entry and prior exit decisions of an mnc have a marginal influence on its own subsequent market entry decisions at the parent firm level

international capital flows abstract the surge in international asset trade since the early 1990s has lead to renewed interest in models with international portfolio choice we develop the implications of portfolio choice for both gross and net international capital flows in the context of a simple two country dynamic stochastic general equilibrium dsge model we focus on the time variation in portfolio allocation following shocks and resulting capital flows endogenous time variation in expected returns and risk which are the key determinants of portfolio choice affect capital flows in often subtle ways the model is consistent with a broad range of empirical evidence an additional contribution of the paper is to overcome the technical difficulty of solving dsge models with portfolio choice by developing a broadly applicable solution method

is knowledge power knowledge flows subsidiary power and rent seeking within mncs in recent years as multinational corporation mnc subsidiaries have become more closely linked to international networks their knowledge intensity has risen and some of their r d has gained a more creative role simultaneously and often connectedly many subsidiaries have acquired considerable strategic independence in all aspects of their operations and therefore are able to exercise considerable intra firm bargaining power to influence the distribution of the firm s resources in this context we suggest that intra mnc knowledge flows are a key determinant of subsidiary bargaining power we argue that subsidiary managers can exploit such power to pursue their own ends such rent seeking behavior is implicit in much of the literature on managerialism but our analysis suggests that such behavior can now occur in headquarters subsidiary and subsidiary subsidiary relations thus subsidiary strategic independence designed to enhance the competitiveness of outputs market knowledge and inputs asset seeking and learning can be corroded when the pursuit of subsidiary objectives encourages rent seeking empirical analysis of a sample of high technology subsidiaries in the uk provides strong support for the theory we examine several avenues whereby the incentives of units within the mnc can be aligned

multinational corporation internationalization in the service sector a study of japanese trading companies this paper extends chang s 1995 sequential investment theory to include multinational corporations mncs in service industries given this sector s large and growing impact on the global economy to facilitate an examination of service mnc internationalization patterns we develop a new typology of service investment i e core global related local unrelated global and unrelated local based on business relatedness and location specificity we test this typology on a sample of large japanese trading companies our results suggest that the initial investments of service mncs are closely related to their core businesses and are less location specific but that subsequent investments are less related to firms core services and are more location specific a pattern similar to the traditional view on manufacturing mncs we extend our analysis to examine several case studies to provide a richer context for these findings in addition we examine the performance implications of internationalization our findings suggest that firms that internationalize through early investments that are closely related to their core activities outperform those in unrelated businesses over time but that this performance gap between related and unrelated foreign investments diminishes in more advanced stages of internationalization

international evidence on time variation in trend labor productivity growth this paper provides international evidence on time variation in trend productivity growth based on the dataset for hours worked constructed by ohanian raffo 2012 applying both the endogenous break tests of bai perron 1998 2003 and the stock watson 1996 1998 tvp mub methodology substantial evidence of time variation in trend productivity growth is detected for most countries for either japan or countries belonging to the eurozone evidence points towards a significant growth decline over the last several decades weaker evidence is reported for the united states for which the 1990 s productivity acceleration is estimated to have been overall mild and of a temporary nature

the need for international policy coordination what s old what s new what s yet to come the first generation of policy coordination models was introduced some 25 years ago it provided a rationale for policy coordination but the gains from coordination were generally thought to be small now a new generation of policy coordination models is emerging incorporating monopolistic competition and nominal inertia here we examine macroeconomic interdependence and the scope for policy coordination in a tractable second generation model with two countries and multiple sectors initial calibration of the model suggests that second generation models may have more scope for policy coordination than did the first d 2004 elsevier b v all rights reserved

a note on the transnational solution and the transaction cost theory of multinational strategic management this article assesses the extent to which the results of bartlett and ghoshal s 1989 work can be incorporated in what has now become one of the core explanations of multinational strategic management i e the transaction cost based theory of international production we demonstrate that the transaction cost approach fully incorporates the empirical findings of bartlett and ghoshal s work to do so requires that we make a new distinction between location bound and non location bound firm specific advantages in addition three possible uses of country specific advantages by multinational enterprises need to be identified while the transnational solution as proposed by bartlett and ghoshal is not itself a new theory of multinational strategic management it is compatible with the transaction cost based model of multinational strategic management

vertical keiretsu and international market entry the case of the japanese automobile ancillary industry this study investigated whether small japanese automobile ancillary firms followed the major japanese automakers in setting up production facilities in the united states based on dunning s eclectic theory of foreign direct investment and resource dependence theory hypotheses were generated to explain the determinants of foreign investment of japanese suppliers it was hypothesized that mutual dependencies between the major japanese automobile firms and their suppliers firm specific ownership advantages profitability and keiretsu affiliation influenced the foreign direct investment of the first tier automobile ancillary firms into the united states data on the entire population of 446 japanese automobile ancillary manufacturers were obtained from archival sources logistical regression analyses indicated that keiretsu affiliation previous international experience small size lower dependence of supplier firms on the automobile assembly firm and higher dependence of core firms on affiliate firms all contributed to this foreign direct investment

the role of financial market structure and the trade elasticity for monetary policy in open economies the degree of international risk sharing matters for how monetary policy should optimally be conducted in an open economy this is because risk sharing afiects the way in which monetary policy is afiected by terms of trade considerations in a standard twocountry model with monopolistic competition and nominal rigidities i consider difierent assumptions on international flnancial markets complete markets flnancial autarky and a bond economy and a large region for the crucial parameter of the trade elasticity there are three main results one the prescription of producer price stability as the optimal policy is obtained only as a special case while in general it is optimal to deviate from a strictly zero in ation rate two while gains from international policy coordination are generally small they do become substantial when international risk sharing is poor and wealth efiects from shocks across countries are large and three when international flnancial markets are incomplete there are also sometimes considerable gains over the exible price allocation achievable

how firms grow clustering as a dynamic model of internationalization this paper provides a methodology for identifying the dynamics of international firm expansion demonstrating systematic evidence of both toe in the water and concentrated bursts of internationalization by us multinational enterprises we use the methodology of statistical process control to analyze initial investments in host countries and develop a numerical measure of temporal clustering or bunching using this measure we identify two distinct patterns of growth whereas some firms cluster their investments over time others do not cluster their investments for firms that cluster three types of clustering strategy are identified concentrating hibernating and hybrid arguments based on internal firm architecture experience and learning are advanced to explain these findings

international expansion of telecommunication carriers the influence of market structure network characteristics and entry imperfections this paper examines the internationalization process of telecommunication carriers in this industry early entrants gain substantial first mover advantages due to the transient nature of the windows of market opportunity and the potential to influence the regulatory process as an incumbent to capture these strategic and economic advantages firms follow a strategy of preemption both of markets and partners the authors argue for the need to augment prevailing theory with contextual idiosyncrasies that characterize specific industries

foreignness and exit over the life cycle of firms received wisdom indicates that owing to a liability of foreignness foreign firms exit with greater likelihood than do comparable domestic firms and that the difference attenuates as firms age and overcome the liability we posit that foreign firms are also intrinsically more volatile and footloose than domestic ones and that this leads to an increasing divergence between the exit rates of foreign and domestic firms empirically we find that the difference between exit rates of foreign firms and domestic firms increases with age as exit of foreign firms increases with age while that of purely domestic firms decreases exit rates of domestic based multinationals do not change significantly with age they are between those of foreign and purely domestic firms but are closer to the latter this suggests that the footlooseness observed for foreign firms is due to foreignness more than to multinationality

fdi and internationalization evidence from u s subsidiaries of foreign banks nine foreign banks own the ten largest u s affiliates or subsidiaries of foreign banks these account for 86 of the assets in affiliates and subsidiaries their histories suggest that most now represent an attempt by the parents to grow outside the confines of home markets original motives for their establishment have included ethnic banking and operational stability stemming from geographical dispersion there is one major instance of acquiring capabilities but it does not involve retail banking the dispersal of national origins suggests that bank specific capabilities are the primary source of the parents competitive advantage being from english speaking countries also appears to help lastly the growth of the affiliates and subsidiaries has not come from incremental growth but rather from a rearrangement of assets among banks

international experience and fdi location choices of chinese firms the moderating effects of home country government support and host country institutions we examine the extent to which chinese government support of foreign direct investment fdi projects and host country institutional environments interact with prior entry experience by chinese firms and how this interrelationship affects fdi undertaken by chinese firms we hypothesize that home country government support and well established host country institutions enhance organizational capabilities to take risks in fdi as such they reduce the need to accumulate experiential knowledge and capabilities relating to entering host countries based on prior entry experience in a particular country when undertaking follow up investment projects using a unique hand collected panel data set of chinese publicly listed firms during 2002 2009 we find that home government support and well developed host country institutions reduce the importance of prior entry experience and significantly increase the likelihood of fdi entry into a host country further from our subsample analyses we identify differences between entering developed and developing host countries in terms of the impact of home country government support and quality of host country institutions our findings help explain the puzzle concerning why emerging economy firms have rapidly internationalized in a short period of time and do not follow the pattern predicted by classical ib theories

international dimensions of optimal monetary policy abstract this paper provides a baseline general equilibrium model of optimal monetary policy among interdependent economies with monopolistic firms and nominal rigidities an inward looking policy of domestic price stabilization is not optimal when firms markups are exposed to currency fluctuations such a policy raises exchange rate volatility leading foreign exporters to charge higher prices vis a vis increased uncertainty in the export market as higher import prices reduce the purchasing power of domestic consumers optimal monetary rules trade off a larger domestic output gap against lower consumer prices optimal rules in a world nash equilibrium lead to less exchange rate volatility relative to both inward looking rules and discretionary policies even when the latter do not suffer from any inflationary or deflationary bias gains from international monetary cooperation are related in a non monotonic way to the degree of exchange rate pass through

on the international transmission of technology shocks abstract using vector autoregressions on u s time series and an aggregate of industrialized countries we find that technology shocks appreciate the terms of trade and lower the trade balance they induce an s shaped cross correlation function for both variables the s curve in calibrating a prototypical international business cycle model under complete and incomplete financial markets we find two distinct sets of parameter values while both model specifications deliver the s curve the underlying transmission mechanism of technology shocks is fundamentally different most importantly only in the incomplete markets economy the terms of trade appreciate and thus amplify the relative wealth effects of technology shocks as suggested by the evidence

experiential knowledge and costs in the internationalization process using a behavioral approach this study identifies and delineates components of experiential knowledge in the internationalization process three hypotheses are developed and tested they center around the lack of knowledge in the areas of foreign business foreign institutions and firm internationalization as well as the effect that this lack of knowledge has on managers perceived cost in the internationalization process with the help of a lisrel based structural model the three hypotheses are tested on a sample of 362 service firms the analysis shows that lack of internationalization knowledge has a strong impact on the lack of both business and institutionalization but there is no direct effect of lack of internationalization knowledge on perceived cost of internationalization

optimal monetary policy optimal monetary policy maximizes the welfare of a representative agent given frictions in the economic environment constructing a model with two sets of frictions costly price adjustment by imperfectly competitive firms and costly exchange of wealth for goods we find optimal monetary policy is governed by two familiar principles first the average level of the nominal interest rate should be sufficiently low as suggested by milton friedman that there should be deflation on average yet the keynesian frictions imply that the optimal nominal interest rate is positive second as various shocks occur to the real and monetary sectors the price level should be largely stabilized as suggested by irving fisher albeit around a deflationary trend path since expected inflation is roughly constant through time the nominal interest rate must therefore vary with the fisherian determinants of the real interest rate although the monetary authority has substantial leverage over real activity in our model economy it chooses real allocations that closely resemble those which would occur if prices were flexible in our benchmark model there is some tendency for the monetary authority to smooth nominal and real interest rates

country portfolios in open economy macro models this paper develops a simple approximation method for computing equilibrium portfolios in dynamic general equilibrium open economy macro models the method is widely applicable simple to implement and gives analytical solutions for equilibrium portfolio positions in any combination or types of asset it can be used in models with any number of assets whether markets are complete or incomplete and can be applied to stochastic dynamic general equilibrium models of any dimension so long as the model is amenable to a solution using standard approximation methods we first illustrate the approach using a simple two asset endowment economy model and then show how the results extend to the case of any number of assets and general economic structure

real options and foreign affiliate divestments a portfolio perspective this paper develops a real options portfolio perspective on foreign affiliate divestments affiliates are less likely to be divested in response to adverse environmental change if they represent growth or switch option value to the multinational firm under conditions of macroeconomic uncertainty however the affiliate is partially redundant to the option value of the multinational firm s affiliate portfolio if the affiliate shares the manufacturing platform role in the host country with other affiliates or if macroeconomic conditions of the host country are highly correlated with those of other countries in which the multinational firm operates affiliates we find strong support for these arguments in tests on a comprehensive sample of 1078 asian manufacturing affiliates of japanese electronics multinationals

the role of intermediate goods in international monetary cooperation abstract this paper investigates the implications of intermediate goods for optimal monetary policy in open economies and particularly focuses on the welfare gains that result from monetary cooperation in a relatively standard two country dynamic stochastic general equilibrium model with input output relations this paper demonstrates that introducing intermediate goods can amplify the welfare gains caused by cost push shocks by an order of magnitude larger a detailed analysis of equilibrium dynamics highlights a new channel that is absent in the previous literature non cooperative central banks respond differently to shocks in the intermediate goods market versus shocks in the final goods market even if these shocks generate the same distortions when the two central banks cooperate furthermore it is demonstrated that increasing the degree of openness in the intermediate goods market can reduce the welfare gains from monetary cooperation this casts doubt on whether the recent trend in international economic integration justifies the potential need for international monetary cooperation

obstfeld and rogoff s international macro puzzles a quantitative assessment abstract obstfeld and rogoff 2001 propose that trade frictions lie behind key puzzles in international macroeconomics we take a dynamic multicountry model of international trade production and investment to data from 19 countries to assess this proposition quantitatively using the framework developed in eaton et al 2016 we revisit the puzzles in a counterfactual world without trade frictions in manufactures removing these trade frictions goes a long way toward resolving a number of puzzles the dependence of domestic investment on domestic saving falls by half or disappears entirely mitigating the feldstein and horioka 1980 puzzle changes in nominal gdps in u s dollars become less variable across countries and line up with changes in real gdps as much as with real exchange rates mitigating the exchange rate disconnect puzzle less dramatically changes in consumption become more correlated across countries mitigating the consumption correlations puzzle and changes in real exchange rates become less variable across countries mitigating the relative purchasing power parity puzzle

recent trends and structural breaks in us and eu15 labour productivity growth this article examines shifts in labour productivity growth in the us and in europe between 1970 and 2007 based on econometric tests of structural breaks additionally it makes use of time series based projections of labour productivity growth up to 2009 in order to detect breaks depending on confidence intervals of the projections the identification of structural breaks in the us labour productivity growth is far from obvious a statistically significant break is found in the late 1990s only if at least the 97 5th percentile of forecasts materializes in the future which means that despite a clear pick up in productivity growth in the second half of the 1990s the size of the hump is not large enough compared with past variations to make this change a statistically significant break however a significant break point is detected in the mid 1990s for the difference in labour productivity growth between the us and the eu15 even when controlling for the convergence of europe towards the us productivity l

towards an economic theory of the multiproduct firm this paper outlines a theory of the multiproduct firm important building blocks include excess capacity and its creation market imperfections and the peculiarities of organizational knowledge including its fungible and taut character a framework is adopted in which profit seeking firms are seen to diversify in order to avoid the high transactions costs associated with using various markets to trade the services of various specialized assets neoclassical explanations of the multiproduct firm are shown to be seriously deficient

the uppsala internationalization process model revisited from liability of foreignness to liability of outsidership the uppsala internationalization process model is revisited in the light of changes in business practices and theoretical advances that have been made since 1977 now the business environment is viewed as a web of relationships a network rather than as a neoclassical market with many independent suppliers and customers outsidership in relation to the relevant network more than psychic distance is the root of uncertainty the change mechanisms in the revised model are essentially the same as those in the original version although we add trust building and knowledge creation the latter to recognize the fact that new knowledge is developed in relationships

a review of research on the growth of multinational enterprises a penrosean lens abstract we provide a comprehensive review of the growth of multinational enterprises mnes based on a quarter century 25 years of scholarly international business publications we synthesize research insights on the determinants of the growth of mnes through the lens of penrose s theory of firm growth which is the most influential theoretical perspective on firm growth the review takes stock of the research findings on the facilitators constraints and the trajectory of growth of mnes and elaborates on the commonalities and differences between research on the growth of mnes that draws on penrose s theory and research that does not this comparison highlights the opportunity to build an internally coherent theory of the growth of mnes that is a theory that connects what an mne is to what determines an mne s growth it also indicates that past research placed a strong emphasis on exogenous factors e g cross country distances as key constraints on growth even though the penrosean lens suggests a close consideration of endogenous factors that drive international growth as well as endogenizing the ostensibly exogenous growth determinants the review highlights the importance of firm specific managerial knowledge and learning which shapes the direction of the growth of mnes and ensures its administrative coherence