This paper provides a theoretical formalisation of the joint-venture contract, as an alternative to Foreign Direct Investment (FDI), within a Dissipation of Intangible Assets framework. In a two-period, two-country equilibrium model, we discuss how the threat of knowledge spillover shapes the boundaries of a Multinational Enterprise. Similarly to the theoretical findings on the FDI-licensing trade off, we show that Foreign Direct Investment is more likely to emerge when know-how easily spills over – i.e. when firms are endowed with more intangible assets or they belong to high tech industries. Probit estimates, from an entirely new firm-level dataset, constructed by the author, show that the experience of Italian multinationals in Asia is in line with our theoretical predictions.
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Paper provided by Fondazione Eni Enrico Mattei in its series Working Papers with number
2005.122.
Find related papers by JEL classification: F23 - International Economics - - International Factor Movements and International Business - - - Multinational Firms; International Business C25 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Single Equation Models; Single Variables - - - Discrete Regression and Qualitative Choice Models O5 - Economic Development, Technological Change, and Growth - - Economywide Country Studies
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