Location of multinational firms in asymmetric countries

In this paper, the equilibrium location choices of a large number of firms in an economy consisting of two asymmetrically-sized countries are examined in the context of an evolutionary game. The main conclusions of MARKUSEN and VENABLES concerning the existence of multinational firms (i.e. multiplan...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Author: Pontes, José Pedro (author)
Format: workingPaper
Language:eng
Published: 2010
Subjects:
Online Access:http://hdl.handle.net/10400.5/2733
Country:Portugal
Oai:oai:www.repository.utl.pt:10400.5/2733
Description
Summary:In this paper, the equilibrium location choices of a large number of firms in an economy consisting of two asymmetrically-sized countries are examined in the context of an evolutionary game. The main conclusions of MARKUSEN and VENABLES concerning the existence of multinational firms (i.e. multiplant firms arise if transport costs are high in relation to plant fixed costs and if the countries are close to symmetry in size) are confirmed in an analytically solvable framework. The framework of an evolutionary game allows the exact determination of the proportions of national and multinational firms in mixed equilibria.