dc.description.abstract | There has been considerable research on the performance gains attributable
to international trade and foreign direct investment in recent years. However, the
empirical ndings are still unclear, in part because of di erent studies adopting
di erent methodologies.
The rst aim of this thesis is to contribute to the international economics and
international business literature by conducting a meta-analysis of research that
studies the causal relationship between exporting and rm productivity and of
research that examines the relationship between multinationality and rm performance.
In particular, the results indicate the impact of exporting upon productivity
is higher in developing than developed countries, an important result
from the point of views of the economic analysis of globalization and economic
policy in general.
Existing studies on multinationality and rm performance have not considered
that multinational rms may di er with respect to their location choices of
overseas investment. This is an important aspect given that there are substantial
di erences across developed and developing countries locations. My research lls
this gap by drawing on data covering a very large number of multinational rms
from 46 countries. Speci cally, I examine whether heterogeneous investments
abroad, in developed and developing countries, have signi cantly di erent e ects
on rm performance. The results indicate that multinational rms with more
FDI presences in developing countries have signi cantly higher performance than
developed countries.
China has been undergoing a period of high economic growth and this is likely
4
to be due, in part, to the massive levels of international trade. The third issue
covered in my dissertation concerns whether there is any export premium and/or
learning by exporting. I conduct my analysis using data for more than 3,000
Chinese rms over the period 2000-2005. Overall, I nd the existence of export
premium, and once the rm has entered there is additional productivity growth
in post-entry period. | en_US |