Suchergebnisse

This paper analyzes the employment behavior of home multinational enterprises (MNEs) in Europe. To this end we use a unique firm level panel data set of more than 1,000 European multinational parent enterprises and their affiliates. The affiliates are located either in the European Union (North, South), Central and Eastern Europe or both. We find for parent firms operating in the manufacturing sector that the labor cost elasticity of parent employment with respect to North EU affiliates?labor costs is positive and statistically significant, ranging from 0.03 to 0.08, depending on the specification considered. This implies employment substitution between parents and their North EU based affiliates takes place in response to wage cost differentials between the parent and its North EU based affiliates. This substitution effect becomes stronger when affiliates are operating in a different sector than their parent firm. However, we find no evidence for such substitution effects between parent employment and its affiliates that are located in low wage regions in the EU and in Central and Eastern Europe. Furthfirmore substitution effects are absent for parent firms operating in the nonmanufacturing sector. Our results suggest that on average the competition from low wage countries in Central and Eastern Europe and the South of the EU did not contribute to a relocation of domestic jobs to these low wage regions.

Regulating an export firm (or a homogeneous industry) with private information about emission technology is analysed, when the firm, owned partly by foreigners, has an option to bypass domestic regulation through costly relocation. If the firm chooses to relocate, it will set up a new plant in a region practicing environmental dumping, at a cost that is correlated with emission efficiency, so as to make the firm's reservation utility type-dependent. We characterise the set of optimal contracts offered by the uninformed, domestic government under different ownership structures, when domestic taxation is distortive, and when welfare is the sum of consumers' surplus and the share of the firm's rent accruing to domestic residents. With complete information, ownership has no real effects. When information is incomplete, ownership matters, due to rent extraction, being of greater significance when ownership rights are shifted towards foreigners. Rent extraction is accomplished by offering contracts with lower output and higher net emissions to a subset of the most efficient types (being induced to stay), whereas a subset of the least efficient types should be induced to relocate. A demand for environmental dumping is being induced by the domestic government's concern for national interests. When barriers towards foreign ownership are lowered, and then shifting the distribution of ownership rights in the favour of foreigners, more pollution will be generated for types of the firm that do not exit, whereas a larger fraction of the firm types should be induced to relocate.

Standortentscheidungen sind Grundsatzentscheidungen von höchster strategischer Bedeutung. Vielfach beruhen sie auf wenigen, vorrangig monetären Aspekten. Automobilzulieferer agieren bei Auslandsproduktionsstrategien besonders dynamisch. Die Autoren analysieren Zukunftstrends, Erfolgsmuster und Entscheidungsfaktoren. Sie konzipieren neue Ansätze zur fundierten und zukunftsorientierten Standortbewertung, die auf in der Praxis bewährte Entscheidungsmethoden setzen. Ein facettenreiches, abgesichertes Gesamtbild je nach Standortalternative für alle, die Standortentscheidungen treffen oder sich mit

We examine whether discretionary government grants influence the location of new plants, and how effective these incentives are in the presence of agglomeration and urbanisation externalities. We find evidence that regional industrial structure affects the location of new entrants. Firms in more agglomerated industries locate new plants near to others in the same industry. Firms are also attracted to industrially diversified locations. Foreign multinationals locate new plants near to other foreign-owned plants in the same industry. Fiscal incentives in the form of grants are found to have some effect in attracting plants to specific geographic areas eligible for such aid.

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The Pollution-Haven Hypothesis suggests that tight environmental standards reduce domestic producers' competitiveness and give rise to their relocating to countries with more lenient standards. This paper questions that relocation is always caused by reduced competitiveness at home. By using a signaling approach, I show that relocation can be undertaken for purely strategic reasons. Relocation is the producer's tool to convince the policy maker to refrain from a further tightening of environmental control. I show that trade liberalization increases probability of strategic relocation.