Ragnhild Balsvik

Is Labor Mobility a Channel for Spillovers from Multinationals? Evidence from Norwegian Manufacturing

Does hiring workers with experience from multinationals (MNEs) increase productivity in non-MNEs? Tracing worker flows between plants in Norwegian manufacturing during the 1990s, I find a positive correlation between the share of workers with MNE experience in non-MNEs and the productivity of these plants. Workers with MNE experience contribute 20 more to the productivity of their plant than workers without such experience, even after controlling for differences in unobservable worker characteristics. The private return to mobility is smaller than the productivity effect at the plant level, which suggests that labor mobility from MNEs to non-MNEs represents a true knowledge externality.

Picking "Lemons" or Picking "Cherries"? Domestic and Foreign Acquisitions in Norwegian Manufacturing

We compare the performance in employment, wages and productivity for domestic plants acquired by new domestic and foreign owners. Prospective foreign owners pick large, high-wage, high-productivity plants, while new domestic owners choose average performers of above-average size. Employment, labour productivity, and total factor productivity decline in domestic acquisition targets before acquisitions; only wages recover afterwards. Employment, wages and labour productivity increase after foreign acquisitions. The sample selection introduced by long-term comparisons and a focus on unique events introduces a downward bias into the results for domestic acquisitions and an upward bias for the foreign acquisitions.

Ownership change and its implications for the match between the plant and its workers

Is ownership change an opportunity for new owners to make systematic changes in the workforce of the acquired plant? This paper explores the adjustments to plant size and the composition of the workforce that occur around ownership change using matched employer-employee data. Furthermore, we explore changes in the workforce along unobservable dimensions of worker quality and the quality of the match between the plant and its workers. We observe excess labour turnover around ownership change, but only in the case of foreign acquisitions do we find an improvement in unobserved worker and match quality at the plant level.

Guided through the `Red tape'? Information sharing and foreign direct investment

What drives the observed tendency of new FDI, other things equal, to be attracted to locations where many other foreign investors are located? One explanation in the literature on FDI location is that expected bene ts from agglomeration externalities make rms want to locate in agglomerated regions. Alternatively, potential investors get information about conditions in a host from rms in their own business network that already have experience from that country. We study how Norwegian FDI location choice depends on previous Norwegian presence, using information about institutional quality to separate the impact of information sharing from agglomeration externalities. The impact of previous Norwegian investors is larger in countries with low institutional quality. We interpret this as consistent with the presence of information sharing among Norwegian investors.

Rent Sharing with Footloose Production. Foreign Ownership and Wages Revisited.

We present a bargaining model of wage and employment determination, where we show that foreign acquisitions might hurt the bargaining outcome of powerful unions by giving the fi rm a credible threat to move production abroad. Using detailed data on fi rms and workers in manufacturing, including information on union membership and foreign ownership, we fi nd, in line with the predictions of our model, that foreign acquisitions negatively impact the outcome of workers in highly unionized plants.