A stylised partial equilibrium model of an MNC is developed. The model incorporates key aspects of outsourcing in a world of falling trade costs. The multinational, with firm-specific capital operates in two countries that differ in factor prices; it produces final goods with firm specific capital but can source multiple intermediate goods internally from each subsidiary (produced with firm-specific capital and labour), or outsource them from domestic or foreign suppliers. There is a potential trade off between scale of final good production and scope of in-house component production. Trade liberalization can affect both country and organization choices of the firm’s component sourcing and final-good production. We also use a previously unused data set on component trade of Toyota in Southeast Asia to conduct an empirical investigation informed by the model insights.
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Paper provided by DEGIT, Dynamics, Economic Growth, and International Trade in its series DEGIT Conference Papers with number
c012_045.
References listed on IDEAS Please report citation or reference errors to , or , if you are the registered author of the cited work, log in to your RePEc Author Service profile, click on "citations" and make appropriate adjustments.:
Pol Antràs & Elhanan Helpman, 2003.
"Global Sourcing,"
NBER Working Papers
10082, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
[Downloadable!] (restricted)
Gene M. Grossman & Elhanan Helpman, 2002.
"Outsourcing versus FDI in Industry Equilibrium,"
Working Papers
148, Princeton University, Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs, Discussion Papers in Economics..
[Downloadable!]