Arm's-Length Transactions as a Source of Incomplete Cross-Border Transmission: the Case of Autos

Rebecca Hellerstein and Sofia Villas-Boas

No 7196, CUDARE Working Papers from University of California, Berkeley, Department of Agricultural and Resource Economics

Abstract: A growing share of international trade occurs through intra-firm transactions, transactions between domestic and foreign subsidiaries of a multinational firm. The difficulties associated with writing and enforcing a vertical contract compound when a product must cross a national border, and may explain the high rate of multinational trade across such borders. We show that this common crossborder organization of the firm may have implications for the well-documented incomplete transmission of shocks across such borders. We present new evidence of a positive relationship between an industry's share of multinational trade and its rate of exchange-rate pass-through to prices. We then develop a structural econometric model with both manufacturers and retailers to quantify how firms' organization of their activities across national borders affects their pass-through of a foreign cost shock. We apply the model to data from the auto market. Counterfactual experiments show why cross-border transmission may be much higher for a multinational than for an arm's-length transaction. In the structural model, firms' pass-through of foreign cost shocks is on average 29 percentage points lower in arm's-length than in multinational transactions, as the higher markups from a double optimization along the distribution chain create more opportunity for markup adjustment following a shock. As arm's-length transactions account for about 60 percent of U.S. imports, this difference may explain roughly 20 percent of the incomplete transmission of foreign-cost shocks to the U.S. in the aggregate.

Keywords: International; Relations/Trade (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 61
Date: 2006
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (4)

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Working Paper: Arm's-length transactions as a source of incomplete cross-border transmission: the case of autos (2006)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ags:ucbecw:7196

DOI: 10.22004/ag.econ.7196

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