This paper considers the impact of business and social networks on international trade and foreign direct investment (FDI). I propose that differences in the strength of network effects across countries can produce asymmetric trade and investment flows that may lead to trade friction. This proposition is examined using a model of multi-product producers of a differentiated product. A firm from a country with strong network effects has a cost advantage in selling to buyers from its own country. This advantage results in lower inward FDI, lower total imports but larger volumes of reverse imports (i.e., imports from overseas affiliates of that country’s own firms) into the country with strong network effects. The model’s predictions match observed asymmetric trade and investment flows that sometimes lead to US-Japan trade friction in industries such as automobiles.
Download Info
To download:
If you experience problems downloading a file, check if you have the
proper application to
view it first. Information about this may be contained
in the File-Format links below. In case of further problems read
the IDEAS help
page. Note that these files are not on the IDEAS
site. Please be patient as the files may be large.
Publisher Info
Paper provided by University of Hawaii at Manoa, Department of Economics in its series Working Papers with number
200215.
Find related papers by JEL classification: F23 - International Economics - - International Factor Movements and International Business - - - Multinational Firms; International Business F12 - International Economics - - Trade - - - Models of Trade with Imperfect Competition and Scale Economies
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.:
Brander, James A & Eaton, Jonathan, 1984.
"Product Line Rivalry,"
American Economic Review,
American Economic Association, vol. 74(3), pages 323-34, June.
[Downloadable!] (restricted)
Other versions:
Cited by: (explanations, 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.)
Arribas, Iván & Pérez, Francisco & Tortosa-Ausina, Emili, 2008.
"On the Dynamics of Globalization,"
MPRA Paper
16007, University Library of Munich, Germany, revised 2008.
[Downloadable!]