Firm Heterogeneity and the Structure of Export and FDI:Evidence from Japanese Manufacturing Industries

Ayumu Tanaka

Discussion papers from Graduate School of Economics Project Center, Kyoto University

Abstract: The percentage of exporters and multinational enterprises (MNEs) varies substantially across industries. We extend the firm heterogeneity model presented in Helpman et al. (2004) to derive testable predictions about the prevalence of these internationalized modes. The model indicates that intra-industry firm heterogeneity and R&D intensity play large roles in the inter-industry variation of the number of internationalized firms. We investigate whether these factors as well as import tariff affect the structure of export and foreign direct investment (FDI) using Japanese industry-level data. We obtain results that are consistent with the model. First, industries with larger productivity dispersion have a larger percentage of non-MNE exporters, a larger percentage of MNEs, and a larger percentage of the sum of exporters and MNEs. Second, MNEs are heavily concentrated in R&D intensive industries. In addition, we reveal that lower import tariffs raise the percentage of exporters and MNEs in line with Melitz (2003).

Keywords: Firm heterogeneity; Multinationals; Exports; Foreign direct investment (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: F1 F23 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 21 pages
Date: 2010-03
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.econ.kyoto-u.ac.jp/projectcenter/Paper/e-09-003.pdf (application/pdf)

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:kue:dpaper:e-09-003

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Discussion papers from Graduate School of Economics Project Center, Kyoto University Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Graduate School of Economics Project Center ().