We measure the contribution of firm-embedded productivity to cross-country income differences. By firm-embedded productivity, we refer to the components of productivity that are firm-specific, such as blueprints, management practices, and other intangible capital. Using micro-level data for multinational enterprises (MNEs), we compare market shares of the same MNE in different countries and document that they are systematically larger in less-developed countries. This indicates that MNEs face less competition and that firm-embedded productivity is scarce in these countries. We implement a measure of firm-embedded productivity based on this observation. Differences in firm-embedded productivity account for a third of the cross-country variance in output per worker in our sample.

Intra-firm trade, from parents to affiliates, has been combined with standard models of Multinational production (MP) to deliver gravity-style predictions for foreign affiliates' sales. Nonetheless, the evidence shows that intra-firm trade is concentrated among a small set of large multinational firms. Using firm-level data from 35 countries, we document that only firms belonging to multinational corporations (MNCs) in the upper tail of the firm’s size distribution are significantly affected by the distance to their parents. We present a simple framework featuring MNCs selection into intra-firm trade and derive the analytical gravity equations that are consistent with the empirical findings.​

This paper shows analytically and quantitatively how omitting the striking sectoral heterogeneity of multinational production (MP) and its relationship with countries’ comparative advantage leads to understating the gains from MP and openness. By construction, one-sector models of trade and MP, ignore the conflicting effects that a reduction in MP frictions has on the sectoral dispersion of MP and trade shares. On the one hand, freer MP increases the dispersion of MP shares across sectors, and with it, the gains from MP. On the other hand, it reduces the heterogeneity of trade shares, since MP erodes sectoral level Ricardian comparative advantage, diminishing, therefore, gains from trade. These effects are driven by the disproportional allocation of MP in industries where local firms are relatively less productive, which generates an uneven productivity boost favoring comparative disadvantage sectors, lowering the differences in observed sectoral productivities. To assess the welfare implications of this mechanism, this paper assembles a novel industry-level dataset of bilateral foreign affiliate sales for 32 countries, 9 tradable sectors, and 4 non-tradable sectors.

We use a large firm-level dataset to study the performance of multinational firms across multiple countries during the Great Recession. We document that the foreign affiliates of multinational firms grew faster than local firms both before and after the crisis, but that this rapid growth was interrupted in the crisis. We disentangle the mechanisms accounting for this decline in multinational activity. Much of the slowdown can be explained by industry and size differences between domestic and foreign-owned firms. We show, however, that multinational firms from different source countries had different experiences during the crisis. Building on these results, we use a quantitative model of multinational production to assess the role of multinational firms in the global recession. Had multinationals’ performance relative to domestic firms remained unchanged during the crisis, the median country’s aggregate growth would have been 0.12% higher. The impact is heterogeneous across countries, ranging from -0.13 to 0.5%.