Andreas Moxnes

The Margins of Multinational Production and the Role of Intrafirm Trade

Multinational production (MP) can lead to large gains through international technology sharing. However, empirical evidence suggests that geography matters for MP: Affiliate sales fall in distance from the headquarters. We introduce intrafirm trade into a standard model of exports and MP and show that the model is consistent with firm-level and aggregate evidence. Using a maximum likelihood estimator, we find that intrafirm trade plays a crucial role in shaping the geography of MP. An implication of our work is that MP and exports are very similar activities. Consequently, shutting down MP leads to relatively small welfare losses.

The Tip of the Iceberg: A Quantitative Framework for Estimating Trade Costs

Trade costs are often additive. Well-known examples are quotas, per unit tariffs, and, in part, transportation costs. In spite of this, we have no broad and systematic evidence of the magnitude of these costs. In this paper, we develop a new empirical framework for estimating additive trade costs from standard firm-level trade data. Our results suggest that additive barriers are on average 14%, expressed relative to the median price. The point estimates are strongly correlated with common proxies for trade costs. Using our microestimates, we show that an additive import tariff reduces welfare and trade by more than an equal-yield multiplicative tariff.

Are Sunk Costs in Exporting Country Specific

Previous studies have shown that there are significant sunk entry costs in exporting. However, the empirical literature has not addressed whether these costs are global or country specific. In this paper, I show that both are present and estimate that country-specific costs are about three times the magnitude of global costs. Furthermore, I show that international standards harmonization has strong positive effects on imported variety in small and remote markets. Calibration of a modified Chaney (2008) model indicates that these markets will gain access to 3-4% more imported varieties when global costs increase by 10%, holding total entry costs constant.

Heterogeneous Firms or Heterogeneous Workers? Implications for Exporter Premiums and the Gains from Trade

We investigate to what extent worker heterogeneity explains the well-known wage and productivity exporter premiums, employing a matched employer-employee data set for Norwegian manufacturing. The wage premium falls by roughly 50% after controlling for observed and unobserved worker characteristics, while the total factor productivity premium falls by 25% to 40%, suggesting that sorting explains up to half of these premiums. Recent trade models emphasize the role of within-industry reallocation of labor in response to various shocks to the economy. Our findings suggest that aggregate productivity gains due to reallocation may be overstated if not controlling for sorting between firms and workers.

Are We Sucked into Fairy Tale Roles? Role Archetypes in Imagination and Organization

This research is an attempt to understand and measure mythological roles in attributional processes. Drawing upon Carl Jung’s work on the archetype we, first, argue how role archetypes from fantasy dramas and worldwide fairy tales populate organizational life, and further, contend that they have extensive influence on how group members sort their judgments of each other. In the second part of the article, our understanding of role archetypes is aided by quantitative measurements: participants in 31 consecutive leadership development classes are asked which fellow classmates they spontaneously associate with each of seven good and seven bad fairy tale roles (deep roles), if any. Our main question is to evaluate the magnitude of agreement on the assignment of roles. Results give strong support to the assumption that group members quite easily categorize fellow members into stereotypes identified by fairy tale roles. Given the evidence in the present analysis, we posit that the role imagoes most frequently assigned (The Big Five of Fairy Tales) are isomorphic with core family roles, and further, that broad personality traits have their roots in archetypal imaginations. To more effectively secure that mythological mechanisms will not triumph over more rational, complex and balanced ways of judgments, we suggest that organizational research should acknowledge the subtle and hidden world of deep role archetypes.

Production Networks, Geography, and Firm Performance

This paper examines the importance of buyer-supplier relationships for firm performance. We develop a model in which firms outsource tasks and search for suppliers. Lower search and outsourcing costs lead firms to search more and find better suppliers, which in turn drives down marginal costs. We test the theory by exploiting the opening of a high-speed train line in Japan, which lowered the cost of passenger travel but left shipping costs unchanged. Using an exhaustive data set on firms’ buyer-seller linkages, we find significant improvements in firm performance as well as creation of buyer-seller links, consistent with the model.