Firm Dynamics and Employment Adjustment: Multinational vs Domestic Firms

Pierre Blanchard, Emmanuel Dhyne, Catherine Fuss and Claude Mathieu
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Pierre Blanchard: Université de Paris-EST, ERUDITE

No 2013013, Discussion Papers (REL - Recherches Economiques de Louvain) from Université catholique de Louvain, Institut de Recherches Economiques et Sociales (IRES)

Abstract: The economic and financial crisis has led to sizable employment losses resulting from different adjustment mechanisms in domestic and multinational firms. This may be due to either production plant closures or downsizing by those firms that remain active. This paper evaluates the importance of both phenomena for multinational and domestic firms in Belgium over the period preceding the crisis (1997–2008), using a firm-level dataset. Our results reveal that multinational enterprises tend to leave the local market more frequently than domestic firms with comparable firm and sector characteristics. Further, multinational incumbents face employment adjustment costs for white-collar workers that are around half of those borne by domestic firms. In sum, our findings suggest that multinational firms are more flexible in terms of both plant location and employment adjustment. However, before the crisis, foreign multinationals created more jobs on average than other types of firms.

Keywords: Multinational firms; Labour adjustment costs; Firm exit (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: F23 J23 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 22
Date: 2013-03-01
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

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Related works:
Journal Article: Firm Dynamics and Employment Adjustment: Multinational vs Domestic Firms (2013)
Working Paper: Firm dynamics and employment adjustment: Multinational vs domestic firms (2013)
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