A Structural Model of Export versus Affiliates Production

Joern Kleinert () and Farid Toubal

No 288, Tübinger Diskussionsbeiträge from University of Tübingen, School of Business and Economics

Abstract: We derive and estimate an econometric model of export versus foreign production using firm-level data on foreign activities of German multinationals. Proximity-concentration theory which we derive our model from shows that firms face a trade-off between concentrating their production at home to save on plant set-up costs and producing abroad to save on distance costs. Firms facing this trade-off choose between export and foreign production according to their expected profits. The model is brought to the data using a pooled-probit analysis over the period 1996-1999. We find support for the proximity-concentration trade-off. In particular, market size and distance affect positively the probability of foreign production whereas fixed costs have a negative impact on the decision to engage in FDI.

Keywords: Multinational firms; trade (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: F12 F23 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2005
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (15)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.econstor.eu/bitstream/10419/22088/1/288.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:zbw:tuedps:288

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Tübinger Diskussionsbeiträge from University of Tübingen, School of Business and Economics Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics ().