IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/ces/ceswps/_4229.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Heterogeneous Firms in a Product Fragmentation World

Author

Listed:
  • Yue Gao
  • John Whalley

Abstract

This paper analyses the ways in which product fragmentation (producing part of a product in one country, and a part elsewhere) can be used by multinational firms which have different productivity to serve the market abroad when product chains can be internationally and arbitrarily fragmented. Product fragmentation is thus an additional option to serving markets abroad by either horizontal or vertical FDI. Upon opening a market to trade, firms with the lowest productivity will exit, those with intermediate productivity will export, and those with higher productivity will choose fragmentation. Among the latter, the more productive a firm is, the more product chains are allocated abroad. Firms with the highest productivity will choose horizontal FDI. At a sector level, the more prone to fragmentation a sector is, the lower will be the ratio of exports to FDI sales.

Suggested Citation

  • Yue Gao & John Whalley, 2013. "Heterogeneous Firms in a Product Fragmentation World," CESifo Working Paper Series 4229, CESifo.
    • Handle: RePEc:ces:ceswps:_4229
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.cesifo.org/DocDL/cesifo1_wp4229.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Stephen J. Redding, 2011. "Theories of Heterogeneous Firms and Trade," Annual Review of Economics, Annual Reviews, vol. 3(1), pages 77-105, September.
    2. Marc J. Melitz, 2003. "The Impact of Trade on Intra-Industry Reallocations and Aggregate Industry Productivity," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 71(6), pages 1695-1725, November.
    3. Yamashita, Nobuaki, 2010. "The impact of foreign outsourcing on wage inequality in US manufacturing: New evidence," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 107(1), pages 46-48, April.
    4. S. Lael Brainard, 1993. "A Simple Theory of Multinational Corporations and Trade with a Trade-Off Between Proximity and Concentration," NBER Working Papers 4269, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    5. Head, Keith & Ries, John, 2003. "Heterogeneity and the FDI versus export decision of Japanese manufacturers," Journal of the Japanese and International Economies, Elsevier, vol. 17(4), pages 448-467, December.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    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. Filomena Pietrovito & Alberto Franco Pozzolo & Luca Salvatici, 2016. "Internationalization choices: an ordered probit analysis at industry level," Empirical Economics, Springer, vol. 50(2), pages 561-594, March.
    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. Naoto Jinji & Xingyuan Zhang & Shoji Haruna, 2022. "Deep Integration, Global Firms, and Technology Spillovers," Advances in Japanese Business and Economics, Springer, number 978-981-16-5210-3, June.
    4. Jens M. Arnold & Katrin Hussinger, 2010. "Exports versus FDI in German Manufacturing: Firm Performance and Participation in International Markets," Review of International Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 18(4), pages 595-606, September.
    5. Dilek Demirbas & Ila Patnaik & Ajay Shah, 2013. "Graduating to globalisation: a study of Southern multinationals," Indian Growth and Development Review, Emerald Group Publishing Limited, vol. 6(2), pages 242-259, November.
    6. Richard E. Baldwin & Toshihiro Okubo, 2014. "International Trade, Offshoring and Heterogeneous Firms," Review of International Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 22(1), pages 59-72, February.
    7. Nishiyama, Hiroyuki, 2017. "The effect of exchange rate fluctuation on intra-industry reallocation in a firm heterogeneity model with trade and foreign direct investment," The Quarterly Review of Economics and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 64(C), pages 32-43.
    8. Andrew B. Bernard & J. Bradford Jensen & Stephen J. Redding & Peter K. Schott, 2018. "Global Firms," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 56(2), pages 565-619, June.
    9. Pamela Bombarda, 2016. "Firm heterogeneity and the localization of economic activities," Papers in Regional Science, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 95, pages 1-26, March.
    10. Spiros Bougheas & Holger Görg, 2008. "Organizational Forms for Global Engagement of Firms," Discussion Papers 08/33, University of Nottingham, GEP.
    11. TANI Naoki & OGAWA Eiji, 2024. "Firms' Internationalization Decisions and Demand Learning," Discussion papers 24019, Research Institute of Economy, Trade and Industry (RIETI).
    12. Chakraborty, Debashis & Mukherjee, Jaydeep & Lee, Jaewook, 2016. "Do FDI Inflows influence Merchandise Exports? Causality Analysis on India over 1991-2016," MPRA Paper 74851, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    13. Onur A. Koska & Ngo Van Long & Frank Stähler, 2018. "Foreign direct investment as a signal," Review of International Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 26(1), pages 60-83, February.
    14. Facundo Albornoz & Ezequiel García Lembergman, 2015. "Importing After Exporting," Working Papers 122, Universidad de San Andres, Departamento de Economia, revised Jul 2015.
    15. repec:lic:licosd:15905 is not listed on IDEAS
    16. Joachim Wagner, 2015. "Exports, R&D and Productivity: A test of the Bustos-model with enterprise data from France, Italy and Spain," Economics Bulletin, AccessEcon, vol. 35(1), pages 716-719.
    17. Rodrigo Adão & Costas Arkolakis & Sharat Ganapati, 2020. "Aggregate Implications of Firm Heterogeneity: A Nonparametric Analysis of Monopolistic Competition Trade Models," Working Papers 2020-161, Becker Friedman Institute for Research In Economics.
    18. Pflüger, Michael P. & Russek, Stephan, 2011. "Heterogeneous Firms, Trade, and Economic Policy: Insights from a Simple Two-Sector Model," IZA Discussion Papers 6109, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    19. Bin Qiu & Kuntal K. Das & W. Robert Reed, 2020. "The Effect of Exchange Rates on Chinese Trade: A Dual Margin Approach," Emerging Markets Finance and Trade, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 56(15), pages 3709-3731, December.
    20. repec:hal:spmain:info:hdl:2441/17o1b2tj1o9vqae31ao13vabec is not listed on IDEAS
    21. Seungrae Lee, 2016. "Post-production services and optimal integration strategies for the multinational firm," Review of World Economics (Weltwirtschaftliches Archiv), Springer;Institut für Weltwirtschaft (Kiel Institute for the World Economy), vol. 152(4), pages 597-628, November.
    22. Horst Raff & Michael Ryan & Frank Stähler, 2012. "Firm Productivity and the Foreign‐Market Entry Decision," Journal of Economics & Management Strategy, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 21(3), pages 849-871, September.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    product fragmentation; heterogeneity; export; FDI;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • F12 - International Economics - - Trade - - - Models of Trade with Imperfect Competition and Scale Economies; Fragmentation
    • F23 - International Economics - - International Factor Movements and International Business - - - Multinational Firms; International Business
    • L25 - Industrial Organization - - Firm Objectives, Organization, and Behavior - - - Firm Performance

    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:ces:ceswps:_4229. 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: Klaus Wohlrabe (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/cesifde.html .

    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.