Exporting, Global Sourcing, and Multinational Activity: Theory and Evidence from the United States / Pol Antràs, Evgenii Fadeev, Teresa C. Fort, Felix Tintelnot.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Antràs, Pol.

Contributor:

National Bureau of Economic Research.

Fadeev, Evgenii.

Fort, Teresa C.

Tintelnot, Felix.

Series:

Working Paper Series (National Bureau of Economic Research) no. w31488.

NBER working paper series no. w31488

Language:

English

Physical Description:

1 online resource: illustrations (black and white);

Place of Publication:

Cambridge, Mass. National Bureau of Economic Research 2023.

Summary:

Multinational firms (MNEs) dominate trade flows, yet their global production decisions are often ignored in firm-level studies of exporting and importing. Using newly merged data on US firms' trade and multinational activity by country, we show that MNEs are more likely to trade not only with countries in which they have affiliates, but also with other countries within their affiliates' region. We rationalize these patterns with a new source of firm-level scale economies that arises when country-specific fixed costs to source from, or sell in, a market are shared across all the MNE's plants. These shared fixed costs create interdependencies between a firm's production and trade locations that generate third-market responses to bilateral trade policy changes.

Notes:

Print version record

July 2023.