IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/bla/ijethy/v16y2020i4p361-379.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Export versus FDI: Learning through propinquity

Author

Listed:
  • Anthony Creane
  • Kaz Miyagiwa

Abstract

This paper considers the strategic role learning plays on the choice between FDI and export under demand and cost uncertainty. FDI allows a foreign firm to learn local demand, which is beneficial. However, as it buys inputs from the same local input markets as the rival home firm, two firms’ costs become perfectly correlated, which we prove harmful to the foreign firm. Thus, the interplay of the demand acquisition and the cost correlation effect affects FDI decisions. We show that FDI is more likely to occur when firms produce more differentiated goods and that FDI almost always reduces host country welfare.

Suggested Citation

  • Anthony Creane & Kaz Miyagiwa, 2020. "Export versus FDI: Learning through propinquity," International Journal of Economic Theory, The International Society for Economic Theory, vol. 16(4), pages 361-379, December.
    • Handle: RePEc:bla:ijethy:v:16:y:2020:i:4:p:361-379
    DOI: 10.1111/ijet.12198
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://doi.org/10.1111/ijet.12198
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1111/ijet.12198?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Horstmann, Ignatius J & Markusen, James R, 1996. "Exploring New Markets: Direct Investment, Contractual Relations and the Multinational Enterprise," International Economic Review, Department of Economics, University of Pennsylvania and Osaka University Institute of Social and Economic Research Association, vol. 37(1), pages 1-19, February.
    2. Rafael Rob & Nikolaos Vettas, 2003. "Foreign Direct Investment and Exports with Growing Demand," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 70(3), pages 629-648.
    3. Natalia Ramondo & Veronica Rappoport & Kim J. Ruhl, 2013. "The Proximity-Concentration Tradeoff under Uncertainty," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 80(4), pages 1582-1621.
    4. Elhanan Helpman & Marc J. Melitz & Stephen R. Yeaple, 2004. "Export Versus FDI with Heterogeneous Firms," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 94(1), pages 300-316, March.
    5. Stephen W. Salant & Sheldon Switzer & Robert J. Reynolds, 1983. "Losses From Horizontal Merger: The Effects of an Exogenous Change in Industry Structure on Cournot-Nash Equilibrium," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 98(2), pages 185-199.
    6. Qiu, Larry D. & Zhou, Wen, 2006. "International mergers: Incentives and welfare," Journal of International Economics, Elsevier, vol. 68(1), pages 38-58, January.
    7. Brainard, S Lael, 1997. "An Empirical Assessment of the Proximity-Concentration Trade-off between Multinational Sales and Trade," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 87(4), pages 520-544, September.
    8. Bagwell, Kyle & Staiger, Robert W., 2003. "Informational aspects of foreign direct investment and the multinational firm," Japan and the World Economy, Elsevier, vol. 15(1), pages 1-20, January.
    9. David L. Carr & James R. Markusen & Keith E. Maskus, 2021. "Estimating The Knowledge-Capital Model of the Multinational Enterprise," World Scientific Book Chapters, in: BROADENING TRADE THEORY Incorporating Market Realities into Traditional Models, chapter 5, pages 95-110, World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd..
    10. Creane, Anthony, 2007. "Productivity information in vertical sharing agreements," International Journal of Industrial Organization, Elsevier, vol. 25(4), pages 821-841, August.
    11. J. Peter Neary, 2010. "Two and a Half Theories of Trade†," The World Economy, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 33(1), pages 1-19, January.
    12. Edward Schlee, 2008. "Expected consumer’s surplus as an approximate welfare measure," Economic Theory, Springer;Society for the Advancement of Economic Theory (SAET), vol. 34(1), pages 127-155, January.
    13. Sjaak Hurkens, 2014. "Bayesian Nash equilibrium in “linear” Cournot models with private information about costs," International Journal of Economic Theory, The International Society for Economic Theory, vol. 10(2), pages 203-217, June.
    14. Helpman, Elhanan, 1984. "A Simple Theory of International Trade with Multinational Corporations," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 92(3), pages 451-471, June.
    15. Sung, Hongmo & Lapan, Harvey E, 2000. "Strategic Foreign Direct Investment and Exchange-Rate Uncertainty," International Economic Review, Department of Economics, University of Pennsylvania and Osaka University Institute of Social and Economic Research Association, vol. 41(2), pages 411-423, May.
    16. Vives, Xavier, 1984. "Duopoly information equilibrium: Cournot and bertrand," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 34(1), pages 71-94, October.
    17. Katayama, Seiichi & Miyagiwa, Kaz, 2009. "FDI as a signal of quality," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 103(3), pages 127-130, June.
    18. Federico Etro, 2011. "Endogenous Market Structures And Strategic Trade Policy," International Economic Review, Department of Economics, University of Pennsylvania and Osaka University Institute of Social and Economic Research Association, vol. 52(1), pages 63-84, February.
    19. Xavier Vives, 1990. "Trade Association Disclosure Rules, Incentives to Share Information, and Welfare," RAND Journal of Economics, The RAND Corporation, vol. 21(3), pages 409-430, Autumn.
    20. Wilfred J. Ethier, 1986. "The Multinational Firm," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 101(4), pages 805-833.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Xianke Li & Chongyan Li, 2024. "Interaction Effect of Export Trade, Foreign Direct Investment and Technological Independent Innovation in China," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 16(8), pages 1-19, April.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. CREANE, Anthony & MIYAGIWA, Kaz, 2015. "Exporting versus foreign direct investment: Learning through propinquity," Discussion paper series 2015-01, Hitotsubashi Institute for Advanced Study, Hitotsubashi University.
    2. Conconi, Paola & Sapir, André & Zanardi, Maurizio, 2016. "The internationalization process of firms: From exports to FDI," Journal of International Economics, Elsevier, vol. 99(C), pages 16-30.
    3. Sotiris Blanas & Adnan Seric, 2018. "Determinants of intra‐firm trade: Evidence from foreign affiliates in Sub‐Saharan Africa," Review of International Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 26(4), pages 917-956, September.
    4. Erdal Yalcin & Davide Sala, 2014. "Uncertain Productivity Growth and the Choice between FDI and Export," Review of International Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 22(1), pages 189-208, February.
    5. Neary, J. Peter, 2009. "Trade costs and foreign direct investment," International Review of Economics & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 18(2), pages 207-218, March.
    6. Mankan M. Koné & Carl Gaigné & Lota Tamini, 2017. "Supply Uncertainty and Foreign Direct Investments in Agri-food Industry," CIRANO Working Papers 2017s-22, CIRANO.
    7. Sotiris Blanas & Adnan Seric, 2017. "Determinants of Intra-Firm Trade," Working Papers 178118175, Lancaster University Management School, Economics Department.
    8. Antrà s, Pol & Yeaple, Stephen R., 2014. "Multinational Firms and the Structure of International Trade," Handbook of International Economics, in: Gopinath, G. & Helpman, . & Rogoff, K. (ed.), Handbook of International Economics, edition 1, volume 4, chapter 0, pages 55-130, Elsevier.
    9. Tekin-Koru, Ayça, 2012. "Asymmetric effects of trade costs on entry modes: Firm level evidence," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 56(2), pages 277-294.
    10. Valeria Gattai, 2006. "From the Theory of the Firm to FDI and Internalisation: A Survey," Giornale degli Economisti, GDE (Giornale degli Economisti e Annali di Economia), Bocconi University, vol. 65(2), pages 225-262, November.
    11. Chen, Maggie Xiaoyang & Moore, Michael O., 2010. "Location decision of heterogeneous multinational firms," Journal of International Economics, Elsevier, vol. 80(2), pages 188-199, March.
    12. Alessandro Borin & Riccardo Cristadoro, 2014. "Foreign direct investment and multinational firms," Questioni di Economia e Finanza (Occasional Papers) 243, Bank of Italy, Economic Research and International Relations Area.
    13. Salvador Barrios & Holger Görg & Eric Strobl, 2003. "Multinational Enterprises and New Trade Theory: Evidence for the Convergence Hypothesis," Open Economies Review, Springer, vol. 14(4), pages 397-418, October.
    14. Adolfo Maza & Paula Gutiérrez-Portilla, 2022. "Outward FDI and exports relation: A heterogeneous panel approach dealing with cross-sectional dependence," International Economics, CEPII research center, issue 170, pages 174-189.
    15. Raphael Chiappini & François Viaud, 2021. "Macroeconomic, institutional, and sectoral determinants of outward foreign direct investment: Evidence from Japan," Pacific Economic Review, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 26(3), pages 404-433, August.
    16. Andrzej Cieślik, 2020. "What attracts multinational enterprises from the new EU member states to Poland?," Eurasian Business Review, Springer;Eurasia Business and Economics Society, vol. 10(2), pages 253-269, June.
    17. Resmini, Laura & Siedschlag, Iulia, 2013. "Is foreign direct investment to China crowding out the foreign direct investment to other countries?," China Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 25(C), pages 1-16.
    18. Allub, Lian & Aragon, Nicolas, 2023. "Asymmetric effects of trade and FDI: The role of country size and bridge multinational production," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 160(C).
    19. Haoyuan Ding & Kees G. Koedijk & Chang Li & Tong Qi, 2021. "The internationalisation of Chinese firms: Impact of FDI experience on export performance," The World Economy, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 44(12), pages 3609-3640, December.
    20. Pol Antràs & Esteban Rossi-Hansberg, 2009. "Organizations and Trade," Annual Review of Economics, Annual Reviews, vol. 1(1), pages 43-64, May.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:bla:ijethy:v:16:y:2020:i:4:p:361-379. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Wiley Content Delivery (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.blackwellpublishing.com/journal.asp?ref=1742-7355 .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.