International Trade and Investment.

• Position: Program and Working Group Meetings

The NBER's Program on International Trade and Investment met in Cambridge on March 28 and 29. Program Director Robert C. Feenstra of the University of California, Davis organized the meeting. These papers were discussed:

Nathan Nunn, Harvard University and NBER, and Daniel Trefler, University of Toronto and NBER, "The Boundaries of the Multinational Firm: An Empirical Analysis"

Ann Harrison, University of California, Berkeley and NBER, and Margaret McMillan, Tufts University and NBER, "Offshoring Jobs? Multinationals and U.S. Manufacturing Employment"

Robert C. Feenstra; Marshall B. Reinsdorf, U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis; and Matthew J. Slaughter, Dartmouth College and NBER, "Effects of Terms of Trade Gains and Tariff Changes on the Measurement of U.S. Productivity Growth"

Susana Iranzo, Universitat Rovira Virgili, and Giovanni Peri, University of California, Davis and NBER, "Migration and Trade in a World of Technological Differences: Theory with an Application to Eastern-Western European Integration"(NBER Working Paper No. 13631)

Ram C. Acharya, Industry Canada, and Wolfgang Keller, University of Colorado, Boulder and NBER, "Technology Transfer Through Imports" (NBER Working Paper No. 13086)

Gerard Padro i Miquel, London School of Economics and NBER, and Pol Antras, Harvard University and NBER, "A Theory of Foreign Influence"

Susumu Imai, Queen's University; Hajime Katayama, University of Sydney; and Kala Krishna, Pennsylvania State University and NBER, "A Quantile-Based Test of Protection for Sale Model"(NBER Working Paper No. 13900)

Using data on U.S. intra-firm and arm's-length imports for 5,423 products and 210 countries, Nunn and Trefler examine the determinants of the share of U.S. imports that are intra-firm. Three determinants of this share have been proposed: 1) Antras (2003) focuses on the share of inputs provided by the headquarter firm. Nunn and Trefler provide added confirmation and further strengthen the empirical findings in that paper and Yeaple (2006). 2) In a model featuring heterogeneous productivities, Antras and Helpman (2004) focus on the interaction between the firm's productivity level and the headquarter's input share. Nunn and Trefler find very strong support for this determinant. 3) Antras and Helpman (2006) add to this the possibility of partially incompletc contracting. The authors here find that, consistent with the novel prediction of their model, improved contracting of the supplier's inputs can...