KCG Working Papers

KCG Working Paper No.10: Financial Frictions and Foreign Direct Investment: Evidence from Japanese Microdata

16th March 2018
KCG Secretary
Publications
Publications
Authors: Horst Raff, Michael Ryan and Frank Stähler

Using Japanese microdata for the period 1980 to 2000 we find evidence for two transmission channels from financial shocks to foreign direct investment: a collateral channel, whereby changes in the value of investors’ landholdings affect their borrowing ability; and a lending channel, whereby changes in bank health affect banks’ lending ability. Decreasing land values[…]

KCG Working Paper No. 9: Markups of Exporters and Importers: Evidence from Hungary

8th March 2018
KCG Secretary
Publications
Publications
Authors: Cecilia Hornok and Balázs Muraközy

This paper studies the relationship between firm-level markups and trade status using balance sheet information linked to detailed trade data from Hungary between 1995-2003. We find that importing is strongly positively correlated with markups both across and within firms. We argue that this correlation can reflect three channels: self-selection, higher physical productivity resulting from access to a larger variety of inputs and quality upgrading based on high-quality imported intermediate inputs[…]

KCG Working Paper No.8: How Global is FDI? Evidence from the Analysis of Theil Indices

31st December 2017
KCG Secretary
Publications
Publications
Authors: Frank Bickenbach, Wan-Hsin Liu and Peter Nunnenkamp

It is open to question whether the intensified worldwide competition for FDI has reduced its traditionally strong concentration in a few large and relatively advanced host countries We calculate and decompose Theil indices to track changes in absolute and relative concentration of FDI during the period 1970-2013[…]

KCG Working Paper No. 4: Export Market Exit and Financial Health in Crises Periods

19th October 2017
KCG Secretary
Publications
Publications
Authors: Holger Görg and Marina-Eliza Spaliara

This paper uses rich firm-level data for the UK to investigate the link between firms’ financial health and export exit, paying attention to the ERM currency crisis and the global financial crisis. Our results show that deterioration in the financial position of firms has increased the hazard of export exit during the 2007-09 crisis but has no significant effect on the early 1990s crisis. We also explore the extent to which firms in financially vulnerable industries face greater sensitivity of export exit to financial conditions. We conclude that firms in sectors with great reliance on external finance experience higher hazards of exiting the export market during the 2007-09 crisis..[…]

KCG Working Paper No.3: South-South FDI: Is It Really Different?

26th May 2017
KCG Secretary
Publications
Publications
Authors: Robert Gold, Holger Görg, Aoife Hanley and Adnan Seric

We compare the performance of Northern and Southern multinationals in Sub-Saharan Africa, and contrast it with local firms in the host country. Employing unique firm level data for 19 Sub-Saharan African countries, we show that firms receiving FDI outperform domestic ones, while the origin of the foreign investor is of minor importance. We use four different definitions of “South” to compare Northern and Southern FDI. Overall, we do not find strong differences in terms of firm productivity growth between Northern and Southern FDI, irrespective of how the latter is defined. We also find that employment growth is generally higher for firms receiving FDI from other African investors as compared to Northern FDI, and they also receive more technology transfer from their parent company abroad.

KCG Working Paper No.2: Firms’ Global Engagement and Management Practices

27th April 2017
KCG Secretary
Publications
Publications
Authors: Holger Görg and Aoife Hanley

We investigate whether firms’ "global engagement", either in the form of exporting or opening up affiliates abroad, is related to the change in their management performance. We use new and unique data from a recent large scale firm survey of management practices in Germany. We calculate management scores for firms as in Bloom et al. (2013), which indicate how structured management is in a given firm .[…]