The Location of Domestic and Foreign Production Affiliates by French Multinational Firms
32 Pages Posted: 1 Feb 2010
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The Location of Domestic and Foreign Production Affiliates by French Multinational Firms
The Location of Domestic and Foreign Production Affiliates by French Multinational Firms
Date Written: Janurary 2010
Abstract
Economists interested in location choices usually focus their attention on investments abroad. This neglects the fact that multinational enterprises continue to invest domestically while undertaking foreign expansion. This paper compares investments at home and abroad. Our firm-level dataset shows an important home bias in productive investments. Part of this "excessive" domestic investment is explained by standard determinants of location choices. The interdependence between affiliates of the same industrial group however accounts for the lion's share of the home bias. Moreover, French firms' propensity to invest abroad is positively related to their productivity and the size of their intangible assets.
Keywords: Economic models, Foreign direct investment, France, Industrial investment, Industrial production, Manufacturing sector, Productivity, Transnational corporations
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