Internationalization Strategies of Multi-Product Firms

本项目侧重于分析多产品企业潜在的国际化战略。有关国际贸易的文献证明了多产品企业在国际市场上的相关性，并表明多产品企业产品范围的调整对全球化如何影响受影响行业的市场结构具有重大影响。重要的是，这些调整在确定全球化带来的福利收益方面具有重要的数量意义。该项目侧重于多产品公司的外国直接投资。我们想分析多产品公司内部调整对海外投资决策的影响，以及这些决策对福利和劳动力市场的影响。这些问题不能用单一产品公司的传统模型来解决，需要将多产品公司文献中的新理论元素整合到跨国背景中。本研究计划可分为两个不同的子课题，这两个子课题是由不同的动机驱动的，企业为什么将生产转移到国外。第一个子项目侧重于寻求外国直接投资的效率，旨在将离岸外包文献中成熟的理论技术与多产品公司文献中的新成果相结合。特别是，这个子项目旨在重新评估（基于成本的）离岸外包在多产品公司存在下的劳动力市场后果。第二个子项目的重点是多产品企业进入国外市场的最佳方式（市场寻求型FDI）。在该项目的这一部分，计划开发一种新的多产品框架，使公司可以同时通过出口和外国直接投资为外国客户服务。这个框架可以用来研究两种国际化战略对劳动力市场的不同影响。该理论模型有望对多产品企业的最优国际化战略提出一些新颖的预测。这些预测将通过使用德国跨国公司的公司层面数据（MiDi Microdatabase Direct Investment）进行检验。项目小组由三名研究人员组成，他们在多产品公司领域单独或联合工作。所有项目成员都非常熟悉关于多产品公司的动态文献和该领域的一系列论文，所有成员都在国际背景下对多产品公司的不同方面进行了理论和经验研究。

This project focuses on the analysis of potential internationalization strategies of multi-product firms. The literature on international trade documents the relevance of multi-product firms in international markets and shows that adjustments in the product ranges of multi-product firms have significant influence on how globalization impacts the market structure of the affected industries. Importantly, these adjustments are quantitatively significant in determining the welfare gains from globalization. This project focusses on foreign direct investment of multi-product firms. We want to analyze the impact of adjustments within multi-product firms on the decision to invest abroad, and the welfare and labor market consequences of these decisions. These questions cannot be addressed using the traditional models with single-product firms, and require the integration of novel theoretical elements from the literature on multi-product firms into a multinational context. The research proposal can be divided into two distinct sub-projects, which are motivated by the differentiated motives, why firms relocate production abroad. The first sub-project focuses on efficiency seeking FDI and aims to blend well established theoretical techniques from the offshoring literature with novel achievements from the literature on multi-product firms. In particular, this sub-project aims to reevaluate the labor market consequences of (cost-based) offshoring in the presence of multi-product firms. The focus of the second sub-project lies on the optimal manner by which multi-product firms can access foreign markets (market seeking FDI). Within this part of the project, it is planned to develop a novel multi-product framework where firms can serve foreign customers by exports and foreign direct investment simultaneously. This framework can then be used to investigate the differential labor market effects of the two internationalization strategies. The theoretical model is expected to bring forth a number of novel predictions regarding the optimal internationalization strategies of multi-product firms. These predictions will be tested by using firm-level data for German multinationals (MiDi Microdatabase Direct Investment). The project group consists of three researchers who have worked both individually and jointly in the area of multi-product firms. All project members are very familiar with the still dynamic literature on multi-product firms and a range of papers within this field documents that all members have worked both theoretically and empirically on different aspects of multi-product firms in an international context.