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AbstractIn this paper we find that the exchange rate exposure of individual firms increases with the return horizon. Also, the cross‐sectional differences in the magnitude of exposure of individual firms are significantly related to firm size but not to the relative portion of foreign sales to total sales. The empirical evidence is consistent with the hypothesis that hedging activities exhibit economies of scale, and, consequently, the magnitude of economic exposure is less for larger firms than for smaller firms.

Machine generated contents note: Part I. The Pioneering Years (1863-1914): The Quest for a Leadership and the First Stages of the Internationalization: 1. First steps: when vision and reality meet; 2. A multinational pioneer; 3. Reaching a dominant position; 4. Labor organization, social policy, and societal vision; 5. The consolidation of power; 6. Conclusion of Part I; Part II. The Years of Crisis (1914-50): The Making and Unmaking of International Alliances: 7. The multiple fronts of World War One; 8. From ashes, 1918-22; 9. The making of international alliances; 10. Family and finance through the crisis; 11. The electrolytic industry; 12. Facing war again; 13. Solvay's second post-war; 14. Conclusion of Part II; Part III. The Era of Diversification and Globalization (1950-2012): 15. Growth through diversification: the successful entry into plastics and peroxides; 16. Enlarging scale and scope: backward and forward integration in the 1960s and 1970s; 17. Solvay goes public: financial and organizational limits of a family firm; 18. The long and winding road to Deer Park: Solvay's return to the United States; 19. From bulk to brains: Solvay's entry into pharmacy and the life sciences; 20. Solvay in the age of globalization; 21. Towards sustainable product-leadership; 22. Chemical and plastics of the future: major turning points at the start of a new century; 23. Conclusion of Part III

I consider a continuum of multinational enterprises (MNEs), which differ in profitability. MNEs employ capital, shift profit to tax havens and may relocate their production facilities to other countries. Source countries provide public inputs and levy taxes. I derive optimal policy choices for different government objectives (to maximize tax revenue, national income or the representative household's utility) allowing for an unrestricted set of tax policy instruments — in contrast to most existing work on corporate taxation. With observable productivity types, source governments set type-dependent lump-sum taxes and attain the first-best allocation. With unobservable productivity types, the optimum source-based tax system consists of a small lump-sum tax (driving low-profit types out of the market) and positive marginal taxes on reported profit. Optimal marginal tax rates on capital inputs are positive if more profitable firms employ more capital. Optimal public inputs are lower than in the first best if they are of higher value to more profitable firm types. I use a sufficient statistics approach (following Saez 2001) to express optimal tax and input choices as functions of elasticities of observable choice variables. Finally, I use the model to evaluate tax policy measures, e.g. the introduction of an effective minimum tax on profits in tax havens, and to derive the welfare properties of tax competition with an unrestricted set of tax instruments.

Ernest Solvay, philanthropist and organizer of the world-famous Solvay conferences on physics, discovered a profitable way of making soda ash in 1861. Together with a handful of associates, he laid the foundations of the Solvay company, which successfully branched out into other chemicals, plastics and pharmaceuticals. Since its emergence in 1863, Solvay has maintained world leadership in the production of soda ash. This is the first scholarly book on the history of the Solvay company, which was one of the earliest chemical multinationals and today is among the world's twenty largest chemical companies. It is also one of the largest companies in the field to preserve its family character. The authors analyze the company's 150-year history (1863–2013) from economic, political and social perspectives, showing the enormous impact geopolitical events had on the company and the recent consequences of global competition. ; SCOPUS: bk.b ; info:eu-repo/semantics/published ; 1

Wie in vergangenen Rezessionen verursachte auch die Wirtschaftskrise 2008-2009 Spannungen im internationalen Handelssystem. Allerdings spielen diesmal Importzölle, das klassische Instrument, um eigene Industries vor ausländischer Konkurrenz zu schützen, keine bedeutende Rolle, vor allem nicht in den Industriestaaten. Die WTO-Bestimmungen haben sich diesbezüglich als effizienter Schutz gegen ein Abgleiten in eine protektionistische Handelspolitik erwiesen. In anderen Politikbereichen hingegen, etwa bei Beihilfen und WTO-Schutzmaßnahmen, fällt die Bilanz gemischt aus. Obwohl von keinem ausufernden Subventionswettlauf die Rede sein kann, sind massive staatliche Interventionen in der Automobilindustrie zu verzeichnen. Diese kamen vorwiegend führenden multinationalen Unternehmen zugute, die ihre internationale Präsenz und Mobilität dazu nutzen, bei verschiedenen nationalen Regierungen öffentliche Unterstützungen für sich herauszuschlagen. Weder nationalen Regierungen noch der WTO ist es gelungen, kostspielige Subventionen zu verhindern. Tatsächlich dürften sich Regierungen in einem internationalen Subventionswettbewerb befinden, der von globalen Autoproduzenten initiiert wurde. Dies führte auch dazu, dass sich die Automobilindustrie über die existierenden internationalen Beihilfebestimmungen hinwegsetzen konnte. Dies stellt keinen klassischen Protektionismus zugunsten nationaler Unternehmen dar, sondern eine neue Abwandlung bei der international agierende Firmen lokale Unterstützung für ihre globalen Operationen suchen und dabei Regierungen gegeneinander ausspielen und in einen Subventionswettlauf verstricken. ; Like all crises in the past, the economic downturn of 2008-2009 caused some frictions in the international trading system. Import tariffs, the traditional instrument for protecting domestic industries, however, have not played the primary role in this, particularly not in industrialised countries. The WTO rules have proved to be an efficient shield against a wholesale descent into protectionism in this respect. However, in other policy areas, such as state aid and WTO contingency measures the results are more mixed. While an all-out subsidy war has not broken out, heavy intervention has taken place in the automotive industry. This was much to the benefit of leading multinationals, who have used their international presence and mobility to extract various kinds of public support from governments. Neither governments nor WTO rules have managed to avoid costly subsidies. Indeed governments have found themselves caught in an international subsidy competition inflicted on them by global car manufacturers. This has allowed the car industry to take itself out of the existing international disciplines on subsides. While this is not classical protectionism offered to strictly national industries, we may see a new mutation emerging, wherein multinationals more effectively play governments against each other to lobby for local assistance for what are actually global operations.