The Impact of Locating Production Abroad on Activities at Home

Abstract

We analyze whether firms that establish their first affiliate in a foreign country have a different pattern of growth in output, employment, capital and productivity than firms that remain national. We use firm-level data on German multinational activities and appropriate matching techniques to compare the performance of German multinational firms with their national counterparts. We do not find a negative effect of firm’s decision to establish a foreign affiliate on growth in its employment at home. There is also no significant effect of the internationalization decision of German firms on other measures of activities at home.