Publications

The KCG has various series of publications to provide research findings and policy implications to different interested groups, e.g., students, academics, policy makers and the public. The list of publications will be updated on a regular basis and is available as a PDF file here.

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

19th October 2017
KCG Secretary
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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..[…]

How Global is FDI? Evidence from the Analysis of Theil Indices

10th August 2017
KCG Secretary
Authors: Frank Bickenbach, Wan-Hsin Liu and Peter Nunnenkamp (Empirical Economics, 2018, Vol. 55(4), 1603-1635)

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. We find that both absolute and relative concentration decreased when excluding offshore financial centres from the overall sample. In addition to the narrowing gap between OECD and non-OECD countries, the concentration across non-OECD countries declined for both the absolute and relative measures[…]

Ludger Heidbrink Joined Discussion on Consumption at 3SAT

13th July 2017
KCG Secretary
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Prof. Dr. Ludger Heidbrink (Kiel University), KCG Senior Researcher and Co-Head of the KCG Project “Cross-cultural differences in the perception of corporate social responsibility and consumer social responsibility along global supply chains”, joined a TV discussion on consumption at 3SAT on June 29, 2017. At the discussion „I buy, therefore I am“ moderated by Gert Scobel, Heidbrink discussed with Prof. Frank Trentmann, Ph.D. (Birkbeck College, University of London) about the role of consumption in general and the meaning of responsible consumption in a globalized world in particular. The discussion is expected to encourage the audience to reflect on consumer ethics, the role of culture in economic globalization and potential solutions to the challenges related to the global consumer culture from different perspectives. […]

South-South FDI: Is It Really Different?

4th July 2017
KCG Secretary
Authors: Robert Gold, Holger Görg, Aoife Hanley and Adnan Šerić (Review of World Economics, 2017, Vol. 153(4), 657-673)

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. […]

Holger Görg: G20 May Support Developing Countries to Set up Functioning Investment Promotion Agencies

15th June 2017
KCG Secretary
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In a new “Süddeutsche” article, Holger Görg suggests that G20 may help developing countries set up functioning investment promotion agencies, in order to attract not just FDI but Quality FDI to foster economic development in these countries. Empirical studies show clearly that being integrated into global supply chains as parts of multinational enterprises (MNEs) or their suppliers is advantageous for developing countries. Local firms involved have a higher level of productivity and are more capable of paying higher wages compared to other local firms without global engagement[…]

Holger Görg Gave an Interview on Global Supply Chains and Developing Countries

1st June 2017
KCG Secretary
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When Labour Ministers of G20 countries met two weeks ago in Germany, they reached a consensus on the critical importance of jointly coping with labour market challenges, such as poor working conditions and unfair wage in particularly emerging and developing countries.

More and more emerging and developing countries as well as their economic agents have been increasingly integrated into the global supply chains through new and/or expanding investments of multinational enterprises (MNEs) from the developed countries. Many argue that these MNEs have invested in emerging and developing countries mainly to seek cost advantages supported by low-wage labour, low-cost resources and less strict environmental and labour market regulations on site.[…]

New KCG Study on South-South FDI in Africa

26th May 2017
KCG Secretary
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Foreign direct investment (FDI) was traditionally dominated by firms from developed countries. These countries were also popular FDI destination countries for a long while. Over the past decade, however, more and more developing economies became increasingly intensively integrated in the FDI engagement worldwide – as sourcing as well as destination countries. Driven by the expectation that determinants and effects of FDI from developing economies to developing countries (South-South FDI) may differ from those of traditional FDI both within developed countries (North-North FDI) and from developed countries to developing countries (North-South FDI), there has been an increasing amount of Studies on South-South FDI over time. One of the main research regions for such a specific form of FDI is East/South-East Asia. In contrast, empirical analyses on South-South FDI in Africa are very limited. This may be partially attributable to the lack of reliable representative datasets for the analysis.[…]

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

26th May 2017
KCG Secretary
Publications
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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
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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 .[…]