Internationalization Strategies of Multi-Product Firms

该项目重点分析多产品企业潜在的国际化战略。关于国际贸易的文献记载了多产品公司在国际市场上的相关性，并表明，多产品公司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。我们想分析多产品企业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。这些问题不能解决使用传统的模型与单一产品的公司，并需要从文献中的多产品公司到跨国背景下的新的理论元素的整合。研究建议可以分为两个不同的子项目，这是由不同的动机，为什么企业将生产转移到国外。第一个分项目侧重于追求效率的外国直接投资，目的是将离岸外包文献中成熟的理论方法与多产品公司文献中的新成就相结合。具体而言，这一分项目旨在重新评估多产品公司存在时（基于成本的）离岸外包对劳动力市场的影响。第二个分项目的重点是多产品公司进入外国市场的最佳方式（寻求市场的外国直接投资）。在该项目的这一部分，计划开发一种新的多产品框架，使公司能够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。该理论模型有望为多产品企业的最优国际化战略提出一些新的预测。这些预测将通过使用德国跨国公司的企业级数据（MiDi微数据库直接投资）进行测试。该项目小组由三名研究人员组成，他们在多产品公司领域进行了单独和联合工作。所有项目成员都非常熟悉仍然动态的文献多产品公司和一系列的文件在这一领域的文件，所有成员都在理论和经验上的不同方面的多产品公司在国际范围内。

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.