Intrafirm trade and vertical fragmentation in U.S. multinational corporations

摘要

Using firm-level data, we document two new facts regarding intrafirm trade and the activitiesudof the foreign affiliates of U.S. multinational corporations. First, intrafirm trade is concentratedudamong a small number of large affiliates within large multinational corporations; the median affiliateudships nothing to the rest of the corporation. Second, we find that the input-output coefficientudlinking the parent’s and affiliate’s industries of operation—a characteristic commonly associatedudwith production fragmentation— is not related to a corresponding intrafirm flow of goods.