IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/hit/hiasdp/2015-01.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Exporting versus foreign direct investment: Learning through propinquity

Author

Listed:
  • CREANE, Anthony
  • MIYAGIWA, Kaz

Abstract

This paper considers the strategic role learning plays on foreign direct investments (FDI) under demand and cost uncertainty. FDI allows a foreign firm to respond more effectively to changing local demand than if it exports. With cost uncertainty, however, FDI has a second effect. Since a foreign firm procures inputs locally as does its home country rival, the problem of learning is transformed from about its private parameter to about the common parameter, which proves harmful in both price and quantity competition. We show that FDI decisions depend on whether the firm faces relatively more demand or cost uncertainty, how differentiated the rival's product is, and to what extent inputs are locally procured.

Suggested Citation

  • CREANE, Anthony & MIYAGIWA, Kaz, 2015. "Exporting versus foreign direct investment: Learning through propinquity," Discussion paper series 2015-01, Hitotsubashi Institute for Advanced Study, Hitotsubashi University.
    • Handle: RePEc:hit:hiasdp:2015-01
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://hermes-ir.lib.hit-u.ac.jp/hermes/ir/re/27209/070_hiasDP15-01.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. James R. Markusen, 2004. "Multinational Firms and the Theory of International Trade," MIT Press Books, The MIT Press, edition 1, volume 1, number 0262633078, December.
    2. Horstmann, Ignatius J & Markusen, James R, 1996. "Exploring New Markets: Direct Investment, Contractual Relations and the Multinational Enterprise," International Economic Review, Department of Economics, University of Pennsylvania and Osaka University Institute of Social and Economic Research Association, vol. 37(1), pages 1-19, February.
    3. 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..
    4. Rafael Rob & Nikolaos Vettas, 2003. "Foreign Direct Investment and Exports with Growing Demand," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 70(3), pages 629-648.
    5. Stephen W. Salant & Sheldon Switzer & Robert J. Reynolds, 1983. "Losses From Horizontal Merger: The Effects of an Exogenous Change in Industry Structure on Cournot-Nash Equilibrium," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 98(2), pages 185-199.
    6. Caves, Richard E, 1971. "International Corporations: The Industrial Economics of Foreign Investment," Economica, London School of Economics and Political Science, vol. 38(149), pages 1-27, February.
    7. James R. Markusen, 1995. "The Boundaries of Multinational Enterprises and the Theory of International Trade," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 9(2), pages 169-189, Spring.
    8. Qiu, Larry D. & Zhou, Wen, 2006. "International mergers: Incentives and welfare," Journal of International Economics, Elsevier, vol. 68(1), pages 38-58, January.
    9. Aizenman, Joshua & Marion, Nancy, 2004. "The merits of horizontal versus vertical FDI in the presence of uncertainty," Journal of International Economics, Elsevier, vol. 62(1), pages 125-148, January.
    10. Bagwell, Kyle & Staiger, Robert W., 2003. "Informational aspects of foreign direct investment and the multinational firm," Japan and the World Economy, Elsevier, vol. 15(1), pages 1-20, January.
    11. Creane, Anthony, 2007. "Productivity information in vertical sharing agreements," International Journal of Industrial Organization, Elsevier, vol. 25(4), pages 821-841, August.
    12. Edward Schlee, 2008. "Expected consumer’s surplus as an approximate welfare measure," Economic Theory, Springer;Society for the Advancement of Economic Theory (SAET), vol. 34(1), pages 127-155, January.
    13. Helpman, Elhanan, 1984. "A Simple Theory of International Trade with Multinational Corporations," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 92(3), pages 451-471, June.
    14. Creane, Anthony & Miyagiwa, Kaz, 2008. "Information and disclosure in strategic trade policy," Journal of International Economics, Elsevier, vol. 75(1), pages 229-244, May.
    15. Sung, Hongmo & Lapan, Harvey E, 2000. "Strategic Foreign Direct Investment and Exchange-Rate Uncertainty," International Economic Review, Department of Economics, University of Pennsylvania and Osaka University Institute of Social and Economic Research Association, vol. 41(2), pages 411-423, May.
    16. Vives, Xavier, 1984. "Duopoly information equilibrium: Cournot and bertrand," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 34(1), pages 71-94, October.
    17. Katayama, Seiichi & Miyagiwa, Kaz, 2009. "FDI as a signal of quality," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 103(3), pages 127-130, June.
    18. Federico Etro, 2011. "Endogenous Market Structures And Strategic Trade Policy," International Economic Review, Department of Economics, University of Pennsylvania and Osaka University Institute of Social and Economic Research Association, vol. 52(1), pages 63-84, February.
    19. Anthony Creane & Kaz Miyagiwa, 2007. "Export, Foreign Direct Investment, and Joint Ventures: Learning the Rival's Costs through Propinquity," ISER Discussion Paper 0691, Institute of Social and Economic Research, Osaka University.
    20. Xavier Vives, 1990. "Trade Association Disclosure Rules, Incentives to Share Information, and Welfare," RAND Journal of Economics, The RAND Corporation, vol. 21(3), pages 409-430, Autumn.
    21. Wilfred J. Ethier, 1986. "The Multinational Firm," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 101(4), pages 805-833.
    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. Anthony Creane & Kaz Miyagiwa, 2020. "Export versus FDI: Learning through propinquity," International Journal of Economic Theory, The International Society for Economic Theory, vol. 16(4), pages 361-379, December.
    2. 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.
    3. Joseph Francois & Douglas R. Nelson, 2000. "Victims of Progress: Economic Integration, Specialization, and Wages for Unskilled Labor," Tinbergen Institute Discussion Papers 00-065/2, Tinbergen Institute.
    4. Qiu, Larry D. & Tao, Zhigang, 2001. "Export, foreign direct investment, and local content requirement," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 66(1), pages 101-125, October.
    5. Jacques, Armel, 2006. "Des firmes multinationales : un survol de la littérature microéconomique," L'Actualité Economique, Société Canadienne de Science Economique, vol. 82(4), pages 643-691, décembre.
    6. Helpman, Elhanan & Melitz, Marc J & Yeaple, Stephen, 2003. "Export versus FDI," CEPR Discussion Papers 3741, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    7. James R. Markusen & Keith E. Maskus, 2001. "General-Equilibrium Approaches to the Multinational Firm: A Review of Theory and Evidence," NBER Working Papers 8334, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    8. Larry D. Qiu, 2003. "Comparing Sectoral FDI Incentives: Comparative Advantages and Market Opportunities," Annals of Economics and Finance, Society for AEF, vol. 4(1), pages 151-176, May.
    9. Anthony Creane & Kaz Miyagiwa, 2007. "Export, Foreign Direct Investment, and Joint Ventures: Learning the Rival's Costs through Propinquity," ISER Discussion Paper 0691, Institute of Social and Economic Research, Osaka University.
    10. Valeria Gattai, 2006. "From the Theory of the Firm to FDI and Internalisation: A Survey," Giornale degli Economisti, GDE (Giornale degli Economisti e Annali di Economia), Bocconi University, vol. 65(2), pages 225-262, November.
    11. Elvira Sapienza, 2009. "The interaction between Export and FDI: Central-Eastern Europe and EU15," Quaderni DSEMS 13-2009, Dipartimento di Scienze Economiche, Matematiche e Statistiche, Universita' di Foggia.
    12. Markusen, James, 2005. "Modeling the Offshoring of White-Collar Services: From Comparative Advantage to the New Theories of Trade and FDI," CEPR Discussion Papers 5408, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    13. Cheng, Leonard K. & Qiu, Larry D. & Tan, Guofu, 2005. "Foreign direct investment and international trade in a continuum Ricardian trade model," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 77(2), pages 477-501, August.
    14. Pol Antràs, 2005. "Incomplete Contracts and the Product Cycle," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 95(4), pages 1054-1073, September.
    15. Andrzej Cieślik, 2020. "What attracts multinational enterprises from the new EU member states to Poland?," Eurasian Business Review, Springer;Eurasia Business and Economics Society, vol. 10(2), pages 253-269, June.
    16. Lim, King Yoong, 2019. "Industrial Transformation With Heterogeneous Labor And Foreign Experts," Macroeconomic Dynamics, Cambridge University Press, vol. 23(8), pages 3225-3266, December.
    17. Schiffbauer, Marc & Siedschlag, Iulia & Ruane, Frances, 2017. "Do foreign mergers and acquisitions boost firm productivity?," International Business Review, Elsevier, vol. 26(6), pages 1124-1140.
    18. Wilfred J. Ethier & James R. Markusen, 2021. "Multinational firms, technology diffusion and trade," World Scientific Book Chapters, in: BROADENING TRADE THEORY Incorporating Market Realities into Traditional Models, chapter 7, pages 131-158, World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd..
    19. Ulus Aysegul & Yildiz Halis M., 2012. "On the Relationship between Tariff Levels and the Nature of Mergers," The B.E. Journal of Economic Analysis & Policy, De Gruyter, vol. 12(1), pages 1-40, December.
    20. Debaere, Peter & Lee, Hongshik & Lee, Joonhyung, 2013. "Language, ethnicity and intrafirm trade," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 103(C), pages 244-253.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    FDI; uncertainty; strategic competition; access mode choice; welfare; oligopoly;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • D83 - Microeconomics - - Information, Knowledge, and Uncertainty - - - Search; Learning; Information and Knowledge; Communication; Belief; Unawareness
    • F12 - International Economics - - Trade - - - Models of Trade with Imperfect Competition and Scale Economies; Fragmentation
    • F21 - International Economics - - International Factor Movements and International Business - - - International Investment; Long-Term Capital Movements

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    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:hit:hiasdp:2015-01. 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: Digital Resources Section, Hitotsubashi University Library (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/ashitjp.html .

    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.