Department of Economics

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Browsing Department of Economics by Author "Blonigen, Bruce A."

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    CEO Turnover and Foreign Market Participation
    (University of Oregon, Dept. of Economics, 2003-03) Blonigen, Bruce A.; Wooster, Rossitza B. (Rossitza Bouneva), 1971-
    Anecdotal evidence suggests that new CEOs with foreign backgrounds direct their firms to become more international in their operations. We examine this hypothesis formally using data on U.S. S&P-500 manufacturing firms from1992 through 1997 and biographical information on CEO's birth and education locations that allow us to identify changes from U.S.- to foreign-connected CEOs. Robust to a variety of specifications, we find that a U.S. firm's switch from a U.S. to a foreign CEO leads to substantial increases in the firm's proportion of its foreign assets and foreign affiliate sales. In fact, our preferred specification indicates that foreign asset and affiliate sales proportions increase 25 and 40%, respectively, for the five years after there is CEO turnover to one with a foreign background. This is in contrast to U.S.-to-U.S. CEO switches in our sample that show no evidence of changes in a firms' foreign market participation. These large effects contrast with previous literature that finds little evidence for changes in firm performance with CEO turnover.
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    Do Bilateral Tax Treaties Promote Foreign Investment?
    (University of Oregon, Dept. of Economics, 2001-06-01) Blonigen, Bruce A.; Davies, Ronald B.
    We explore the impact of bilateral tax treaties on foreign direct investment using data from OECD countries over the period 1982-1992. We find that recent treaty formation does not promote new investment, contrary to the common expectation. For certain specifications we find that treaty formation may actually reduce investment as predicted by arguments suggesting treaties are intended to reduce tax evasion rather than promote foreign investment.
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    Dynamic Pricing in the Presence of Antidumping Policy: Theory and Evidence
    (University of Oregon, Dept. of Economics, 2001-07-01) Blonigen, Bruce A.; Park, Jee-Hyeong
    Antidumping (AD) duties are calculated as the difference between the foreign firm’s product price in the export market and some definition of "normal" or "fair" value, often the foreign firm’s product price in its own market. Additionally, AD laws allow for recalculation of these AD duties over time in what are known as an administrative review process. This paper examines for the first time the resulting dynamic pricing problem of a foreign firm that faces such an AD trade protection policy in its export market. When AD duties are certain for any dumping that occurs, we obtain the surprising result that dumping and AD duties should increase over time toward a stationary equilibrium value. Adding uncertainties prevalent in AD enforcement into our analysis changes these conclusions substantially and leads to more realistic testable implications. Firms with ex ante expectations that the probability of AD enforcement is low, or with expectations that the probability of a termination/VER (instead of AD duties) is high, will decrease their dumping and AD duties over time in the administrative review process once they face AD duties. Using detailed data from U.S. AD investigations filed from 1980- 1995, we find evidence consistent with these hypotheses stemming from our analysis with uncertain AD enforcement and provides empirical evidence consistent with James Anderson’s domino dumping hypothesis.
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    The Effects of Bilateral Tax Treaties on U.S. FDI Activity
    (University of Oregon, Dept. of Economics, 2001-01-01) Blonigen, Bruce A.; Davies, Ronald B.
    The effects of bilateral tax treaties on FDI activity have been unexplored, despite significant ongoing activities by countries to negotiate and ratify these treaties. This paper estimates the impact of bilateral tax treaties using both U.S. inbound and outbound FDI over the period 1966-1992. Robust to a wide variety of alternative specifications, we find no evidence that bilateral tax treaties increase FDI activity, contrary to OECD-stated goals for such treaties. In fact, our estimates suggest that for our sample there may instead be economically and statistically significant negative effects of new bilateral tax treaties on U.S. outbound activity to the tax treaty partner country. These findings are consistent with claims that tax treaties are not intended to improve capital flows, but rather to reduce tax evasion through transfer pricing practices or otherwise.
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    Estimating The Knowledge-Capital Model of the Multinational Enterprise: Comment
    (University of Oregon, Dept. of Economics, 2002-03-01) Blonigen, Bruce A.; Davies, Ronald B.; Head, Keith
    No abstract was submitted.
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    Industrial groupings and foreign direct investment
    (University of Oregon, Dept of Economics, 2003-03) Blonigen, Bruce A.; Ellis, Christopher J.; Fausten, Dietrich
    We explore worldwide foreign direct investment location decisions by Japanese manufacturing firms from 1985 through 1991. Our conditional logit estimates provide evidence that firms’ location decisions are affected by membership in either vertical or horizontal keiretsu. Consistent with previous studies that stress agglomeration effects on firms’ location decisions, we find that the stock of investment in a region by a firm’s vertical keiretsu partners increases the probability of location. Further, we find that the recent flow of investment into a region by a firm’s horizontal keiretsu partners increases the probability of investment to the region, providing evidence of networking effects.
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    Networking and Foreign Direct Investment Activity
    (University of Oregon, Dept. of Economics, 2002-09-01) Blonigen, Bruce A.; Wooster, Rossitza B. (Rossitza Bouneva), 1971-
    We conduct an empirical investigation into whether networking effects affect foreign direct investment (FDI) activity. Using bibliographical information on CEOs’ birth and education locations, we are able to identify changes from U.S. to foreign-connected CEOs that occurred in U.S. manufacturing firms of the S&P 500 from 1992 through 1997. Robust to a variety of specifications, we find that a U.S. firm’s switch from a U.S.- to a foreign-connected CEO leads to substantial increases in the firm’s proportion of its assets and sales that are in foreign markets. In fact, our preferred specification indicates that foreign asset and sales proportions increase 30 and 50%, respectively, for the five years after such a CEO switch is made. This is in contrast to U.S.-to-U.S. CEO switches in our sample that show no evidence of changes in a firms’ foreign market participation.
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    Revisiting the Evidence on Trade Policy Preferences
    (University of Oregon, Dept of Economics, 2010-11) Blonigen, Bruce A.
    Past literature has found evidence that labor market attributes affect individuals’ trade policy preferences in a manner consistent with theories of international trade. This paper shows that, with the exception of education, these relationships between labor market attributes and trade policy preferences are not robust in US survey data. This suggests that either our proxies of labor market attributes are poor or our theories for what drives trade policy preferences need to be revisited.
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    Tariff-jumping FDI and Domestic Firms’ Profits
    (University of Oregon, Dept. of Economics, 2002-06-01) Blonigen, Bruce A.; Tomlin, KaSaundra, 1969-; Wilson, Wesley W.
    Studies of the welfare implications of trade policy often do not take account of the potential for tariff-jumping FDI to mitigate positive gains to domestic producers. We use event study methodology to examine the market effects for U.S. domestic firms that petitioned for antidumping (AD) relief, as well as the effect of announcements of FDI by their foreign rivals in the U.S. market on these U.S. petitioning firms. On average, affirmative U.S. AD decisions are associated with 3% abnormal gains to a petitioning firm when there is no tariff-jumping FDI, but no abnormal gains if there is tariff-jumping FDI. The evidence for this mitigating effect is strongest when announcements of the intended tariff-jumping FDI have already occurred before an AD decision takes place, which happened in fair number of cases. We also find evidence that the announcements of plant expansions (and, to some extent, new plants) have significantly larger negative effects on U.S. domestic firms’ profits than other types of FDI, including acquisitions and joint ventures.
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    Technology, Agglomeration, and Regional Competition for Investment
    (University of Oregon, Dept of Economics, 2003-09-01) Blonigen, Bruce A.; Kolpin, Van
    The active "courting" of firms by municipalities, regions, and even nations has a long-standing history and the competition for firm location through a wide variety of incentives seems to have escalated to new heights in recent years. We develop a model that explores technology development by firms that face regional competition for their investment and examine the endogenous determination of regions� policies, firm technology, and agglomeration externalities. In particular, we find that regional competition leads firms to inefficiently distort their development and selection of production technology in hopes of improving their standing in the competition amongst regions for their investment. This loss in efficiency is aggravated by the agglomeration externalities that are inherently present in many industries. We offer several case studies that provide evidence consistent with our theoretical conclusions.
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    Technology, Agglomeration, and Regional Competition for Investment
    (University of Oregon, Dept. of Economics, 2001-06-01) Blonigen, Bruce A.; Kolpin, Van
    The active "courting" of firms by municipalities, regions, and even nations has a long-standing history and the competition for firm location through a wide variety of incentives seems to have escalated to new heights in recent years. We develop a model that explores technology development by firms that face regional competition for their investment and examine the endogenous determination of regions’ policies, firm technology, and agglomeration externalities. In particular, we find that regional competition leads firms to inefficiently distort their research and development efforts in hopes of improving their standing in the competition amongst regions for their investment. This loss in efficiency is aggravated by the agglomeration externalities that are inherently present in many industries. We offer several case studies that provide evidence consistent with our theoretical conclusions.