Essays on the economics of multinational enterprises.

摘要

Each of the four chapters of this thesis empirically examines an issue related to the nature of the firm. Chapter 1 tests the hypothesis that parent company provisions enable affiliates of U.S. MNEs to evade constraints on growth faced by typical local competitors where input markets are weak. The results indicate that the correlations between the growth in market share of individual affiliates and lagged parent provisions of financial and human capital are higher where locally available resources are scarce. By organizing activity inside the boundaries of the firm, agents seem to be able to overcome shortcomings associated with operating within certain geographic boundaries.; Chapter 2, joint work with Mihir Desai and James Hines, analyzes the use of joint ventures by U.S. MNEs. This study links the low and declining propensity of MNEs to share ownership with high and increasing returns to coordination. The evidence indicates that whole ownership is most common in cases in which firms can use wholly owned affiliates to coordinate integrated production activities across different locations, transfer technology, and engage in worldwide tax planning. To address the potential endogeneity of ownership levels and operating characteristics, the analysis examines two exogenous changes in the costs of shared ownership.; Chapters 3 and 4 are also joint work with Mihir Desai and James Hines, and these chapters analyze dividend payments made by affiliates to parents of U.S. MNEs. Chapter 3 considers the dividend puzzle in a novel context by examining the dividend policies that affiliates follow in making remittances to their corporate parent. These policies are remarkably similar to the policies followed by firms making payouts to shareholders. Although agency explanations for dividends paid by firms to shareholders have an analogue inside firms, signaling stories are less relevant. As a result, the analysis suggests that the dividend puzzle has little to do with public capital market concerns and much to do with aspects of corporate control. Chapter 4 calculates the consequences of repatriation taxes for dividends and finds that they reduce aggregate dividend payouts by 12.8 percent and generate annual efficiency losses equal to 2.5 percent of dividends.