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Productivity and the sourcing modes of multinational firms: evidence from French firm-level data

Fabrice Defever and Farid Toubal

LSE Research Online Documents on Economics from London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library

Abstract: We investigate the role of a firm’s total factor productivity in its decision to import from their affiliates rather than from independent input suppliers. We propose a slightly modified version of the Antràs and Helpman (2004) model. We assume higher fixed costs under outsourcing and a firm-specific production function. We use detailed French firm-level data that provides a geographical breakdown of French firms’ import at product level and their sourcing modes in 1999. We find strong empirical support for the theoretical predictions of the model. In particular, high-productivity firms that have a production process intensive in suppliers’ inputs source their inputs through independent foreign suppliers.

Keywords: Productivity; Incomplete Contracts; Intra-firm Trade; Outsourcing (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: F14 F23 L22 L23 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 50 pages
Date: 2007-12
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (36)

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http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/19655/ Open access version. (application/pdf)

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Working Paper: Productivity and the Sourcing Modes of Multinational Firms: Evidence from French Firm-Level Data (2007) Downloads
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