IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/inecon/v98y2016icp51-59.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Intrafirm trade and vertical fragmentation in U.S. multinational corporations

Author

Listed:
  • Ramondo, Natalia
  • Rappoport, Veronica
  • Ruhl, Kim J.

Abstract

Using firm-level data, we document two new facts regarding intrafirm trade and the activities of the foreign affiliates of U.S. multinational corporations. First, intrafirm trade is concentrated among a small number of large affiliates within large multinational corporations; the median affiliate ships nothing to the rest of the corporation. Second, we find that the input–output coefficient linking the parent's and affiliate's industries of operation — a characteristic commonly associated with production fragmentation — is not related to a corresponding intrafirm flow of goods.

Suggested Citation

  • Ramondo, Natalia & Rappoport, Veronica & Ruhl, Kim J., 2016. "Intrafirm trade and vertical fragmentation in U.S. multinational corporations," Journal of International Economics, Elsevier, vol. 98(C), pages 51-59.
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:inecon:v:98:y:2016:i:c:p:51-59
    DOI: 10.1016/j.jinteco.2015.08.002
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0022199615001257
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1016/j.jinteco.2015.08.002?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
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to look for a different version below or search for a different version of it.

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Grossman, Gene M. & Helpman, Elhanan & Szeidl, Adam, 2006. "Optimal integration strategies for the multinational firm," Journal of International Economics, Elsevier, vol. 70(1), pages 216-238, September.
    2. Nicholas Bloom & John Van Reenen, 2007. "Measuring and Explaining Management Practices Across Firms and Countries," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 122(4), pages 1351-1408.
    3. Arnaud Costinot & Lindsay Oldenski & James Rauch, 2011. "Adaptation and the Boundary of Multinational Firms," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 93(1), pages 298-308, February.
    4. Pol Antras & Davin Chor & Thibault Fally & Russell Hillberry, 2012. "Measuring the Upstreamness of Production and Trade Flows," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 102(3), pages 412-416, May.
    5. James R. MARKUSEN, 2021. "Multinationals, Multi-Plant Economies, And The Gains From Trade," World Scientific Book Chapters, in: BROADENING TRADE THEORY Incorporating Market Realities into Traditional Models, chapter 1, pages 3-24, World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd..
    6. Ellen R. McGrattan & Edward C. Prescott, 2010. "Technology Capital and the US Current Account," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 100(4), pages 1493-1522, September.
    7. Enghin Atalay & Ali Horta?su & Chad Syverson, 2014. "Vertical Integration and Input Flows," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 104(4), pages 1120-1148, April.
    8. 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.
    9. Pablo Fajgelbaum & Gene M. Grossman & Elhanan Helpman, 2015. "A Linder Hypothesis for Foreign Direct Investment," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 82(1), pages 83-121.
    10. Michael P. Keane & Susan E. Feinberg, 2006. "Accounting for the Growth of MNC-Based Trade Using a Structural Model of U.S. MNCs," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 96(5), pages 1515-1558, December.
    11. Stephen Ross Yeaple, 2006. "Offshoring, Foreign Direct Investment, and the Structure of U.S. Trade," Journal of the European Economic Association, MIT Press, vol. 4(2-3), pages 602-611, 04-05.
    12. 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..
    13. Gordon H. Hanson & Raymond J. Mataloni & Matthew J. Slaughter, 2005. "Vertical Production Networks in Multinational Firms," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 87(4), pages 664-678, November.
    14. Pol Antràs, 2003. "Firms, Contracts, and Trade Structure," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 118(4), pages 1375-1418.
    15. Pol Antras & Elhanan Helpman, 2004. "Global Sourcing," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 112(3), pages 552-580, June.
    16. Andrew B. Bernard & J. Bradford Jensen & Peter K. Schott, 2009. "Importers, Exporters and Multinationals: A Portrait of Firms in the U.S. that Trade Goods," NBER Chapters, in: Producer Dynamics: New Evidence from Micro Data, pages 513-552, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    17. S. Lael Brainard, 1993. "An Empirical Assessment of the Factor Proportions Explanation of Multi-National Sales," NBER Working Papers 4583, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    18. Richard Baldwin & Javier Lopez-Gonzalez, 2015. "Supply-chain Trade: A Portrait of Global Patterns and Several Testable Hypotheses," The World Economy, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 38(11), pages 1682-1721, November.
    19. Maria Borga & William J. Zeile, 2004. "International Fragmentation of Production and the Intrafirm Trade of U.s. Multinational Companies," BEA Papers 0035, Bureau of Economic Analysis.
    20. Laura Alfaro & Andrew Charlton, 2009. "Intra-industry Foreign Direct Investment," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 99(5), pages 2096-2119, December.
    21. repec:hrv:faseco:4784029 is not listed on IDEAS
    22. Daron Acemoglu & Simon Johnson & Todd Mitton, 2009. "Determinants of Vertical Integration: Financial Development and Contracting Costs," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 64(3), pages 1251-1290, June.
    23. Kim J. Ruhl, 2015. "How Well Is US Intrafirm Trade Measured?," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 105(5), pages 524-529, May.
    24. Timothy Dunne & J. Bradford Jensen & Mark J. Roberts, 2009. "Producer Dynamics: New Evidence from Micro Data," NBER Books, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc, number dunn05-1, March.
    25. Luis Garicano & Esteban Rossi-Hansberg, 2006. "Organization and Inequality in a Knowledge Economy," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 121(4), pages 1383-1435.
    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. 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.
    2. Alfonso Irarrazabal & Andreas Moxnes & Luca David Opromolla, 2013. "The Margins of Multinational Production and the Role of Intrafirm Trade," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 121(1), pages 74-126.
    3. Sotiris Blanas & Adnan Seric, 2017. "Determinants of Intra-Firm Trade," Working Papers 178118175, Lancaster University Management School, Economics Department.
    4. Blyde, Juan & Molina, Danielken, 2015. "Logistic infrastructure and the international location of fragmented production," Journal of International Economics, Elsevier, vol. 95(2), pages 319-332.
    5. Elhanan Helpman, 2006. "Trade, FDI, and the Organization of Firms," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 44(3), pages 589-630, September.
    6. Okubo, Toshihiro & Watabe, Yuta, 2023. "Networked FDI and third-country intra-firm trade," International Review of Economics & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 83(C), pages 591-606.
    7. 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.
    8. Richard Baldwin & Toshihiro Okubo, 2014. "Networked FDI: Sales and Sourcing Patterns of Japanese Foreign Affiliates," The World Economy, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 37(8), pages 1051-1080, August.
    9. Laura Alfaro & Andrew Charlton, 2009. "Intra-industry Foreign Direct Investment," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 99(5), pages 2096-2119, December.
    10. Del Prete, Davide & Rungi, Armando, 2017. "Organizing the global value chain: A firm-level test," Journal of International Economics, Elsevier, vol. 109(C), pages 16-30.
    11. Pamela Bombarda & Stefania Marcassa, 2017. "Intra-Firm Trade, Multinational Production, and Welfare," THEMA Working Papers 2017-15, THEMA (THéorie Economique, Modélisation et Applications), Université de Cergy-Pontoise.
    12. Bahar, Dany, 2020. "The hardships of long distance relationships: time zone proximity and the location of MNC's knowledge-intensive activities," Journal of International Economics, Elsevier, vol. 125(C).
    13. Amador, João & Cabral, Sónia, 2014. "Global value chains: surveying drivers and measures," Working Paper Series 1739, European Central Bank.
    14. Pamela Bombarda & Stefania Marcassa, 2014. "Gains from Intra-Firm Trade and Multinational Production," THEMA Working Papers 2014-14, THEMA (THéorie Economique, Modélisation et Applications), Université de Cergy-Pontoise.
    15. 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.
    16. Wolfgang Keller & Stephen Ross Yeaple, 2013. "The Gravity of Knowledge," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 103(4), pages 1414-1444, June.
    17. Debaere, Peter & Lee, Hongshik & Lee, Joonhyung, 2013. "Language, ethnicity and intrafirm trade," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 103(C), pages 244-253.
    18. Pol Antràs & Esteban Rossi-Hansberg, 2009. "Organizations and Trade," Annual Review of Economics, Annual Reviews, vol. 1(1), pages 43-64, May.
    19. 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.
    20. Marc-Andreas Muendler, 2014. "Export or merge? Proximity vs. concentration in product space," Asia-Pacific Journal of Accounting & Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 21(1), pages 35-57, March.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Foreign affiliate; Parent firm; Foreign direct investment;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • F12 - International Economics - - Trade - - - Models of Trade with Imperfect Competition and Scale Economies; Fragmentation
    • F14 - International Economics - - Trade - - - Empirical Studies of Trade
    • L11 - Industrial Organization - - Market Structure, Firm Strategy, and Market Performance - - - Production, Pricing, and Market Structure; Size Distribution of Firms
    • 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:eee:inecon:v:98:y:2016:i:c:p:51-59. 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: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.elsevier.com/locate/inca/505552 .

    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.