TIlls thesis considers how the presence of firms that operate across national boundaries (multinationals) affect the way we think about several traditional economic issues. Chapter 1 provides some introductory remarks. Chapter 2 considers how the analysis of the impact of taxation on firms' investment incentives is affected by models of the multinational firm It looks at the way in which corporate income taxes affect firms' investment choices when these choices are of a discrete nature, and argues that in such situations the au!Yt1{1! tax rate is a better measure of the impact of tax than the matginal tax rate. Chapter 3 investigates whether there is empirical support for the model laid out in Chapter 2 by examining US-resident firms' choices over whether and how to serve the European market. These choices are modelled using fum level data with a structure that explicitly accounts for the outside options of not serving the European market or producing in the US and exporting to Europe. The empirical results indicate that the effective tZW'~ tax rate plays a part in determining where U.S. firms locate within Europe, conditional on having decided to locate production in Europe. Taxes do not appear to affect the choice between exporting to Europe or locating production there. One of the predominant theoretical models explaining the existence of multinational firms is based on the proposition that they have higher productivity than domestic firms, Chapter 4 empirically examines whether foreign-owned establishments located in the' UK have different characteristics than domesticowned, and in particular whether productivity levels vary systematically by ownership. Parameters of the production function are estimated for the UK car industry using a new establishment level panel data set. The results indicate that higher levels of output per worker in foreign-owned establishments is almost entirely explained by differences in factor usage levels.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:bl.uk/oai:ethos.bl.uk:265033 |
| Date | January 1999 |
| Creators | Griffith, Rachel |
| Publisher | Keele University |
| Source Sets | Ethos UK |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Electronic Thesis or Dissertation |
Page generated in 0.0019 seconds