Trade within Multinational Boundaries

Laura Alfaro, Paola Conconi, Fariha Kamal and Zachary Kroff

No 33887, NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc

Abstract: We leverage newly linked data from the U.S. Census Bureau and the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis to study transactions within U.S. multinational enterprises (MNEs). We show that using administrative data on intrafirm trade allows us to correct for measurement error in survey data and to identify the positive relationship between input-output (IO) linkages and the probability of trade between U.S. parents and their foreign affiliates. We also document the prevalence of intrafirm trade: more than half (three-quarters) of affiliates worldwide (in North America) export to or import from their U.S. parent. Our findings provide strong empirical support for traditional theories of firm boundaries that predict trade between vertically linked units of the same firm, and underscore the importance of accounting for the trade frictions that shape MNEs’ regional supply chains.

JEL-codes: D23 F14 F23 F4 L20 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025-06
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-mac and nep-opm
Note: IFM IO ITI
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.nber.org/papers/w33887.pdf (application/pdf)
Access to the full text is generally limited to series subscribers, however if the top level domain of the client browser is in a developing country or transition economy free access is provided. More information about subscriptions and free access is available at http://www.nber.org/wwphelp.html. Free access is also available to older working papers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:nbr:nberwo:33887

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
http://www.nber.org/papers/w33887
The price is Paper copy available by mail.

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc National Bureau of Economic Research, 1050 Massachusetts Avenue Cambridge, MA 02138, U.S.A.. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by ().