The organization of knowledge in multinational firms

Anna Gumpert

No 33/2015, Discussion Papers from Deutsche Bundesbank

Abstract: This paper provides the first in-depth study of the organization of knowledge in multinational firms. The paper develops a theoretical model that studies how firms optimally split knowledge between their headquarters and their production plants if communication costs impede the access of production plants to headquarter knowledge. The paper assumes that the foreign plants of multinational firms face higher communication costs with headquarters than their domestic plants, and shows that multinational firms therefore systematically assign more knowledge to both their foreign and domestic plants than non-multinationals. This helps explain why multinational firms pay higher wages to their production workers than non-multinational firms, and why their sales and their investment probability decrease across space. Empirical evidence from data on corporate transferees confirms the model predictions for multinationals' organization of knowledge. Data on German multinational firms corroborate the implications of the model in relation to the geography of multinationals' sales and investments.

Keywords: multinational firm; knowledge hierarchy; organization; geography of FDI; multinational wage premium; corporate transferees (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D21 D24 F21 F23 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2015
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-int and nep-knm
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Related works:
Journal Article: The Organization of Knowledge in Multinational Firms (2018)
Working Paper: The Organization of Knowledge in Multinational Firms (2018)
Working Paper: The Organization of Knowledge in Multinational Firms (2017)
Working Paper: The Organization of Knowledge in Multinational Firms (2015)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:zbw:bubdps:332015

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