Exporting, Global Sourcing, and Multinational Activity: Theory and Evidence from the United States
利用美国企业贸易与全球生产的新合并数据，发现跨国公司更倾向于与靠近其子公司的国家进行贸易，并基于共享固定成本提出企业层面规模经济的新来源。
Abstract Multinational firms (MNEs) dominate trade flows, yet their foreign production decisions are often ignored in firm-level studies of exporting and importing. Using newly merged data on US firms' trade and global production, we show that MNEs are more likely to trade with countries that are proximate to their affiliates. We rationalize these patterns with a new source of firm-level scale economies that arises when fixed costs to source from, or sell in, a market are shared across the MNE's plants. These shared fixed costs create interdependencies between firms' production and trade locations that generate third-market responses to trade policy changes.