Do Deep Regional Trade Agreements Enhance International Technology Spillovers? Depth, Breadth, and Heterogeneity

In Chap. 10.1007/978-981-16-5210-3_5, we examine the relationship between bilateral trade patterns and international technology spillovers. In Chap. 10.1007/978-981-16-5210-3_6, we analyze how horizontal and vertical foreign direct investment (FDI) of multinational enterprises (MNEs) affects technology spillovers between themselves and firms in host countries. Both chapters analyze the issues from theoretical and empirical points of view. Each chapter shows that international trade or FDI is an important channel of international technology spillovers, but the effect on them is heterogeneous, depending on the type of trade patterns or the structure of FDI. In both chapters we measure technology spillovers using patent citation data.

Factor Endowments, Economic Integration, Round-Tripping, and Inward FDI: Evidence from the Baltic Economies

This paper studies the location choice of foreign multinational firms in the Baltic economies of Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania using a knowledge-and-physical capital model across 2004–2017. We used the Bayesian model averaging estimation method to investigate a set of possible factors that drive inward FDI. Our analysis demonstrates that factor endowments play a dominant role in driving vertical foreign direct investment, while external market barriers generate “tariff-jumping” FDI. Our analysis quantifies the effects of round-trip FDI, European integration, and external bilateral free trade agreements vis-à-vis inward FDI in the Baltics.

“Exit” vs. “Voice”: Global Sourcing, Multinational Production, and the China Trade Lobby

This paper examines the influence of three different forms of global economic engagement on the lobbying behavior of US businesses with regard to trade relations with China: (a) input sourcing; (b) downstream export; and (c) vertical foreign direct investment. It will be hypothesized that firms involved in all three forms of global economic activities should have incentives to lobby over China-related trade issues in order to maintain unimpeded access to sources of supply or markets and to ensure the smooth operation of the entire supply chain. Going further, drawing on the exit-voice framework developed by Albert Hirschman (1972), it will be argued that compared to firms in those industries mainly involved in input sourcing from China, American multinational corporations that have verticalized their production should have even stronger incentives to engage in lobbying activities and “voice” their policy preferences due to their greater “sunk costs” and hence the higher cost of “exit.” Statistical analysis of the China trade-related lobbying activities of US firms between 2006 and 2016 lends substantial support to these conjectures.

Vertical Foreign Direct Investment, Welfare, and Employment

This paper shows that vertical foreign direct investment will reduce prices but the aggregate welfare effect is unambiguously positive only under free market entry. Using a standard model of imperfect competition, we develop this result by considering two different cases. In the first case, the total number of firms is fixed, and we show that national and multinational firms may coexist. In the second case, we allow for market entry, and we focus on situations in which either only national or only multinational firms are active. Furthermore, we discuss impact effects on labor demand. We show that a decline in foreign wages increases domestic employment.