Multinationals' Productivity Advantage: Scale or Technology?

GEP Research Paper No. 2002/07

University of Nottingham Research Paper No. 2006/22

31 Pages Posted: 22 Jul 2003

See all articles by Sourafel Girma

Sourafel Girma

Nottingham University Business School

Holger Görg

University of Kiel; Kiel Institute for the World Economy

Date Written: August 2006

Abstract

The first aim of this paper is to decompose the productivity advantage of foreign multinationals into two components: the technology and scale effect. The second aim is to analyse the causal relationship between foreign ownership and these two components of productivity growth. We do so by analyzing the effects of an acquisition of a domestic establishment by a foreign multinational enterprise, using a combined propensity score matching and difference-in-differences estimation. Our empirical analysis is based on plant level data for the UK. From our econometric investigation three broad patterns emerge: (i) any positive impact of ownership change is predominantly due to change in technical efficiency, not scale effects (ii) the pre-acquisition TFP level of the erstwhile domestic plants play a role - positive or negative - in mediating the rate of technology transfer from the MNE parent companies, (iii) the productivity growth effects are not confined to the year of acquisition, and tend to persist through time.

Keywords: multinational enterprises, acquisitions, productivity, technical efficiency, returns to scale

JEL Classification: L22, F23

Suggested Citation

Girma, Sourafel and Gorg, Holger, Multinationals' Productivity Advantage: Scale or Technology? (August 2006). GEP Research Paper No. 2002/07, University of Nottingham Research Paper No. 2006/22 , Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=410744 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.410744

Sourafel Girma

Nottingham University Business School ( email )

Jubilee Campus
Nottingham, NG8 1BB
United Kingdom
+44 0 115 8466656 (Phone)

HOME PAGE: http://www.nottingham.ac.uk/~lizsmg/

Holger Gorg (Contact Author)

University of Kiel ( email )

Olshausenstr. 40
D-24118 Kiel, Schleswig-Holstein 24118
Germany

Kiel Institute for the World Economy ( email )

P.O. Box 4309
Kiel, Schleswig-Hosltein D-24100
Germany

Do you have negative results from your research you’d like to share?

Paper statistics

Downloads
182
Abstract Views
1,345
Rank
299,048
PlumX Metrics