Holger Görg
Biographic Data
| ID | 3713876 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Holger Görg |
| GIVEN NAMES | Holger |
| FAMILY NAME | Görg |
| SIGNATURE | GÖRG H |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Nottingham |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-0485-261X |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 27 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 127 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 27 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1999 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 5 |
FDI Spillovers in History: Interwar Japanese “Zaikabo” investment in China’s cotton spinning industry
We estimate productivity spillovers from Japanese cotton-spinning firms in China (known as Zaikabo) to local Chinese cotton-spinning mills based on plant-level data for 1925 to 1938. In order to capture the important role of distance in facilitating such spillovers we geo-localised the plants. Our results provide clear evidence for positive spillovers from Zaikabo to local Chinese mills, which go hand-in-hand with an upgrade in production technol…
Innovation Spillovers From Foreign Direct Investment in Developing Countries: Evidence From Firms in Ethiopia
We estimate the impact of foreign direct investment (FDI) firms on the innovation likelihood of domestic firms in Ethiopia in the manufacturing and services industries. Our novel shift–share instrumental variable, constructed from Chinese FDI to neighbouring countries to address endogeneity and self‐selection, reveals that foreign firms have a strong negative crowding‐out effect on the innovation likelihood of domestic firms, particularly in over…
Bring the Boys Back Home: The Impact of Foreign Divestments on Local Firms
Divestments by foreign multinationals are an important phenomenon that is largely neglected in the literature. We use firm‐level panel data from China to estimate the impact of such divestments on the performance of domestic firms in the local economy. To the best of our knowledge, there is no empirical study that has looked at these effects. Our results suggest that, overall, domestic firms may be able to benefit from divestments by foreign firm…
Africa’s businesswomen – underfunded or underperforming
While the recent success of Africa’s ‘Lionesses’ – successful female entrepreneurs – is internationally celebrated, less is known about how liquidity can fuel the success of the ‘Lionesses’ and other businesswomen. Using information from a panel of over 800 male- and female-owned businesses in Ghana (ISSER-IGC survey), we capture a measure of underfunding, in addition to data on supplier credit, equity and other finance sources. Our regressions r…
Does the belt and road initiative stimulate Chinese exports? Evidence from micro data
This paper evaluates firms' exporting responses to BRI and considers their heterogeneity in ownership types, product types, regional origin and trade mode. This is done by analysing firm–product–destination‐level customs data from 2008 to 2016. Our empirical results show that aggregate export behaviour increased significantly after BRI. However, ownership matters when evaluating firms' reactions, with SOEs and foreign firms benefitting, but priva…
Friends like this: The impact of the US–China trade war on global value chains
This paper considers the indirect impact the recent tariff increases between the United States and China can have on third countries through links in global supply chains. We combine data from input–output relationships, imports and tariffs, to calculate the impact of the tariff increases by both the United States and China on cumulative tariffs paid by third countries. We show that the tariff hikes increase cumulative tariffs for other countries…
Employment Protection and Firm Relocation: Theory and Evidence
We examine the determinants of the decision to relocate activities abroad for firms located in OECD countries. We argue that particular firm‐specific features play a crucial role for the link between employment protection and relocation. Stricter employment protection laws over time in the current production location discourage firms’ relocation abroad. While larger, more productive firms and firms with higher labour intensities have, ceteris par…
Trust-Based Work Time and Innovation: Evidence from Firm-Level Data
The authors explore whether the introduction of trust-based working hours is related to the subsequent innovation performance of firms. Based on a panel data set of German establishments, the study uses a propensity score matching approach that considers only firms that did not use trust-based work contracts initially. Results show that firms that adopt such contracts tend to be 12 to 15% more likely to improve products and 6 to 7% more likely to…
Linkages with Multinationals and Domestic Firm Performance: The Role of Assistance for Local Firms
Financial Health, Exports and Firm Survival: Evidence from UK and French Firms
We use firm‐level data for the UK and France to assess the role of exporting in the link between financial health and firm survival. We examine whether firms at different stages of export activity (starters, exiters, continuers, switchers) react differently to changes in financial variables. In general, export starters and exiters experience much stronger adverse effects of financial constraints for their survival prospects. By contrast, the exit…
Multinationals as Stabilisers? Economic Crisis, Access to Finance, and Employment Growth
This article examines the comparative response of multinationals and domestic firms to an economic crisis, using the empirical setting of a well defined case of economic slowdown in Chile. We find that employment in manufacturing plants has been drastically reduced during the economic crisis. Our findings reveal that multinationals are more likely to exit contributing to the employment contraction during the crisis, but surviving foreign firms ex…
Corruption And Productivity: Firm-Level Evidence From The Beeps Survey
Using enterprise data for the economies of Central and Eastern Europe and the Commonwealth of Independent States, this study examines the effects of corruption on productivity. Corruption is defined as a 'bribe tax' and is compared with another form of institutional inefficiency, which is often believed to be closely linked with corruption: the 'time tax' imposed on firms by red tape. When testing their effects in the full sample, only the bribe …
FDI Liberalisation, Firm Heterogeneity and Foreign Ownership: German Firm Decisions in Reforming India
The paper investigates the role of firm-level productivity and industry-level R&D for multinational enterprises' (MNEs') choice of undertaking foreign direct investment (FDI), and the share of ownership in foreign affiliates. Two firm-specific datasets on German MNEs with varying equity stakes in Indian affiliates are used to account for the two-step decision process. The paper also analyses how German firm decisions were affected by the liberali…
What Determines Innovation Activity in Chinese State-owned Enterprises? The Role of Foreign Direct Investment
Grant Support and Exporting Activity
This paper investigates whether government support can act to increase exporting activity. We use a uniquely rich data set on Irish manufacturing plants and employ an empirical strategy that combines a nonparametric matching procedure with a difference-in-differences estimator in order to deal with the potential selection problem inherent in the analysis. Our results suggest that if grants are large enough, they can encourage already exporting fi…
The impact of foreign direct investment on new firm survival in the UK: Evidence for static versus dynamic industries
The Effect of R&D Subsidies on Private R&D
This paper investigates the relationship between government support for R&D and R&D expenditure financed privately by firms using a comprehensive plant level data set for the manufacturing sector in the Republic of Ireland. We find that for domestic plants small grants serve to increase private R&D spending, while too large a grant may crowd out private financing of R&D. In contrast, evidence for foreign establishments suggests that grant provisi…
Spillovers from Foreign Firms through Worker Mobility: An Empirical Investigation
While there is a large empirical literature on productivity spillovers from multinationals, this literature treats the channels through which these spillover effects work as a black box. The new approach in this paper is to investigate whether spillovers occur via worker mobility. We use data on whether or not the owner of a domestic firm has previous experience in a multinational, and relate this information to firm‐level productivity. Our resul…
Knowledge Accumulation, and Productivity: Evidence From Plant‐level Data for Ireland
This paper investigates whether knowledge accumulating activities, such as exporting, R&D, or worker training, can enhance plants' productivity. To this end, we use plant‐level panel data for Irish manufacturing. Our results importantly indicate that productivity enhancing effects of these factors are found only for domestic firms, but not for foreign multinationals located in Ireland. We postulate a number of potential reasons inherent to multin…
International Outsourcing and the Skill Structure of Labour Demand in the United Kingdom
This article investigates empirically the link between international outsourcing and the skill structure of labour demand in the UK. It is the first detailed study of this issue for the UK. Outsourcing is calculated using import-use matrices of input-output tables for manufacturing industries for the period 1982 to 1996. Estimating a system of variable factor demands, our main results show that international outsourcing has had a strong negative …
Much Ado about Nothing? Do Domestic Firms Really Benefit from Foreign Direct Investment?
Governments the world over offer significant inducements to attract investment, motivated by the expectation of spillover benefits to augment the primary benefits of a boost to national income from new investment. There are several possible sources of induced spillovers from foreign direct investment. This article evaluates the empirical evidence on productivity, wage, and export spillovers in developing, developed, and transition economies. Alth…
Multinationals and Training: Some Evidence from Irish Manufacturing Industries
This paper sets out to analyse the effect of plant and sectoral level characteristics on the provision of training to employees using plant level data for Irish manufacturing. There is no clear evidence that foreign owned plants are more likely to provide training. By contrast, we find that they spend less than domestic plants on training, ceteris paribus. There is also no evidence that plants that receive training grants are more likely to provi…
The Incidence of Visible Underemployment: Evidence for Trinidad and Tobago
This article presents an empirical analysis of the incidence of visible underemployment in Trinidad and Tobago. Visible underemployment consists of workers who work less than the normal duration of working hours but are willing and available to work more. We find that compared to other groups of the labour force the visibly underemployed tend to be less educated and are more likely to work in the private sector. We also find that their revealed b…
Outward FDI and the Investment Development Path of a Late-industrializing Economy: Evidence from Ireland
B ARRY F., G oRG H. and M CDOWELL A. (2003) Outward FDI and the investment development path of a late-industrializing economy: evidence from Ireland, Reg. Studies 37 , 341-349. The Investment Development Path (IDP) hypothesis holds that a country's net outward direct investment position is systematically related to its level of economic development. Ireland is an interesting test case because of the importance of inward foreign direct investment …
Multinational Companies and Productivity Spillovers: A Meta‐Analysis
This paper presents a meta-analysis of the literature on multinational companies and productivity spillovers. By collecting information from a sample of published and unpublished papers on the impact of multinational presence on domestic productivity, we investigate whether certain aspects of the study design affect the results, and whether there is publication bias in the literature. Our findings show that some aspects of the empirical methods u…
Multinational Companies and Productivity Spillovers: A Meta‐Analysis
This paper presents a meta-analysis of the literature on multinational companies and productivity spillovers. By collecting information from a sample of published and unpublished papers on the impact of multinational presence on domestic productivity, we investigate whether certain aspects of the study design affect the results, and whether there is publication bias in the literature. Our findings show that some aspects of the empirical methods u…
International Outsourcing and the Skill Structure of Labour Demand in the United Kingdom
This article investigates empirically the link between international outsourcing and the skill structure of labour demand in the UK. It is the first detailed study of this issue for the UK. Outsourcing is calculated using import-use matrices of input-output tables for manufacturing industries for the period 1982 to 1996. Estimating a system of variable factor demands, our main results show that international outsourcing has had a strong negative …
What Determines Innovation Activity in Chinese State-owned Enterprises? The Role of Foreign Direct Investment
The Effect of R&D Subsidies on Private R&D
This paper investigates the relationship between government support for R&D and R&D expenditure financed privately by firms using a comprehensive plant level data set for the manufacturing sector in the Republic of Ireland. We find that for domestic plants small grants serve to increase private R&D spending, while too large a grant may crowd out private financing of R&D. In contrast, evidence for foreign establishments suggests that grant provisi…
Outward FDI and the Investment Development Path of a Late-industrializing Economy: Evidence from Ireland
B ARRY F., G oRG H. and M CDOWELL A. (2003) Outward FDI and the investment development path of a late-industrializing economy: evidence from Ireland, Reg. Studies 37 , 341-349. The Investment Development Path (IDP) hypothesis holds that a country's net outward direct investment position is systematically related to its level of economic development. Ireland is an interesting test case because of the importance of inward foreign direct investment …
Financial Health, Exports and Firm Survival: Evidence from UK and French Firms
We use firm‐level data for the UK and France to assess the role of exporting in the link between financial health and firm survival. We examine whether firms at different stages of export activity (starters, exiters, continuers, switchers) react differently to changes in financial variables. In general, export starters and exiters experience much stronger adverse effects of financial constraints for their survival prospects. By contrast, the exit…
US Investment in EU Member Countries: The Internal Market and Sectoral Specialization
Linkages with Multinationals and Domestic Firm Performance: The Role of Assistance for Local Firms
Employment Protection and Firm Relocation: Theory and Evidence
We examine the determinants of the decision to relocate activities abroad for firms located in OECD countries. We argue that particular firm‐specific features play a crucial role for the link between employment protection and relocation. Stricter employment protection laws over time in the current production location discourage firms’ relocation abroad. While larger, more productive firms and firms with higher labour intensities have, ceteris par…
Trust-Based Work Time and Innovation: Evidence from Firm-Level Data
The authors explore whether the introduction of trust-based working hours is related to the subsequent innovation performance of firms. Based on a panel data set of German establishments, the study uses a propensity score matching approach that considers only firms that did not use trust-based work contracts initially. Results show that firms that adopt such contracts tend to be 12 to 15% more likely to improve products and 6 to 7% more likely to…
Knowledge Accumulation, and Productivity: Evidence From Plant‐level Data for Ireland
This paper investigates whether knowledge accumulating activities, such as exporting, R&D, or worker training, can enhance plants' productivity. To this end, we use plant‐level panel data for Irish manufacturing. Our results importantly indicate that productivity enhancing effects of these factors are found only for domestic firms, but not for foreign multinationals located in Ireland. We postulate a number of potential reasons inherent to multin…
US Investment in EU Member Countries: The Internal Market and Sectoral Specialization
Determinants of Firm Start-Up Size: An Application of Quantile Regression for Ireland
Multinational Companies and Productivity Spillovers: A Meta‐Analysis
This paper presents a meta-analysis of the literature on multinational companies and productivity spillovers. By collecting information from a sample of published and unpublished papers on the impact of multinational presence on domestic productivity, we investigate whether certain aspects of the study design affect the results, and whether there is publication bias in the literature. Our findings show that some aspects of the empirical methods u…
The Incidence of Visible Underemployment: Evidence for Trinidad and Tobago
This article presents an empirical analysis of the incidence of visible underemployment in Trinidad and Tobago. Visible underemployment consists of workers who work less than the normal duration of working hours but are willing and available to work more. We find that compared to other groups of the labour force the visibly underemployed tend to be less educated and are more likely to work in the private sector. We also find that their revealed b…
Outward FDI and the Investment Development Path of a Late-industrializing Economy: Evidence from Ireland
B ARRY F., G oRG H. and M CDOWELL A. (2003) Outward FDI and the investment development path of a late-industrializing economy: evidence from Ireland, Reg. Studies 37 , 341-349. The Investment Development Path (IDP) hypothesis holds that a country's net outward direct investment position is systematically related to its level of economic development. Ireland is an interesting test case because of the importance of inward foreign direct investment …
Much Ado about Nothing? Do Domestic Firms Really Benefit from Foreign Direct Investment?
Governments the world over offer significant inducements to attract investment, motivated by the expectation of spillover benefits to augment the primary benefits of a boost to national income from new investment. There are several possible sources of induced spillovers from foreign direct investment. This article evaluates the empirical evidence on productivity, wage, and export spillovers in developing, developed, and transition economies. Alth…
Multinationals and Training: Some Evidence from Irish Manufacturing Industries
This paper sets out to analyse the effect of plant and sectoral level characteristics on the provision of training to employees using plant level data for Irish manufacturing. There is no clear evidence that foreign owned plants are more likely to provide training. By contrast, we find that they spend less than domestic plants on training, ceteris paribus. There is also no evidence that plants that receive training grants are more likely to provi…
Spillovers from Foreign Firms through Worker Mobility: An Empirical Investigation
While there is a large empirical literature on productivity spillovers from multinationals, this literature treats the channels through which these spillover effects work as a black box. The new approach in this paper is to investigate whether spillovers occur via worker mobility. We use data on whether or not the owner of a domestic firm has previous experience in a multinational, and relate this information to firm‐level productivity. Our resul…
Knowledge Accumulation, and Productivity: Evidence From Plant‐level Data for Ireland
This paper investigates whether knowledge accumulating activities, such as exporting, R&D, or worker training, can enhance plants' productivity. To this end, we use plant‐level panel data for Irish manufacturing. Our results importantly indicate that productivity enhancing effects of these factors are found only for domestic firms, but not for foreign multinationals located in Ireland. We postulate a number of potential reasons inherent to multin…
International Outsourcing and the Skill Structure of Labour Demand in the United Kingdom
This article investigates empirically the link between international outsourcing and the skill structure of labour demand in the UK. It is the first detailed study of this issue for the UK. Outsourcing is calculated using import-use matrices of input-output tables for manufacturing industries for the period 1982 to 1996. Estimating a system of variable factor demands, our main results show that international outsourcing has had a strong negative …
The Effect of R&D Subsidies on Private R&D
This paper investigates the relationship between government support for R&D and R&D expenditure financed privately by firms using a comprehensive plant level data set for the manufacturing sector in the Republic of Ireland. We find that for domestic plants small grants serve to increase private R&D spending, while too large a grant may crowd out private financing of R&D. In contrast, evidence for foreign establishments suggests that grant provisi…
Grant Support and Exporting Activity
This paper investigates whether government support can act to increase exporting activity. We use a uniquely rich data set on Irish manufacturing plants and employ an empirical strategy that combines a nonparametric matching procedure with a difference-in-differences estimator in order to deal with the potential selection problem inherent in the analysis. Our results suggest that if grants are large enough, they can encourage already exporting fi…
The impact of foreign direct investment on new firm survival in the UK: Evidence for static versus dynamic industries
What Determines Innovation Activity in Chinese State-owned Enterprises? The Role of Foreign Direct Investment
Corruption And Productivity: Firm-Level Evidence From The Beeps Survey
Using enterprise data for the economies of Central and Eastern Europe and the Commonwealth of Independent States, this study examines the effects of corruption on productivity. Corruption is defined as a 'bribe tax' and is compared with another form of institutional inefficiency, which is often believed to be closely linked with corruption: the 'time tax' imposed on firms by red tape. When testing their effects in the full sample, only the bribe …
FDI Liberalisation, Firm Heterogeneity and Foreign Ownership: German Firm Decisions in Reforming India
The paper investigates the role of firm-level productivity and industry-level R&D for multinational enterprises' (MNEs') choice of undertaking foreign direct investment (FDI), and the share of ownership in foreign affiliates. Two firm-specific datasets on German MNEs with varying equity stakes in Indian affiliates are used to account for the two-step decision process. The paper also analyses how German firm decisions were affected by the liberali…
Multinationals as Stabilisers? Economic Crisis, Access to Finance, and Employment Growth
This article examines the comparative response of multinationals and domestic firms to an economic crisis, using the empirical setting of a well defined case of economic slowdown in Chile. We find that employment in manufacturing plants has been drastically reduced during the economic crisis. Our findings reveal that multinationals are more likely to exit contributing to the employment contraction during the crisis, but surviving foreign firms ex…
Financial Health, Exports and Firm Survival: Evidence from UK and French Firms
We use firm‐level data for the UK and France to assess the role of exporting in the link between financial health and firm survival. We examine whether firms at different stages of export activity (starters, exiters, continuers, switchers) react differently to changes in financial variables. In general, export starters and exiters experience much stronger adverse effects of financial constraints for their survival prospects. By contrast, the exit…
Linkages with Multinationals and Domestic Firm Performance: The Role of Assistance for Local Firms
Trust-Based Work Time and Innovation: Evidence from Firm-Level Data
The authors explore whether the introduction of trust-based working hours is related to the subsequent innovation performance of firms. Based on a panel data set of German establishments, the study uses a propensity score matching approach that considers only firms that did not use trust-based work contracts initially. Results show that firms that adopt such contracts tend to be 12 to 15% more likely to improve products and 6 to 7% more likely to…
Employment Protection and Firm Relocation: Theory and Evidence
We examine the determinants of the decision to relocate activities abroad for firms located in OECD countries. We argue that particular firm‐specific features play a crucial role for the link between employment protection and relocation. Stricter employment protection laws over time in the current production location discourage firms’ relocation abroad. While larger, more productive firms and firms with higher labour intensities have, ceteris par…
Friends like this: The impact of the US–China trade war on global value chains
This paper considers the indirect impact the recent tariff increases between the United States and China can have on third countries through links in global supply chains. We combine data from input–output relationships, imports and tariffs, to calculate the impact of the tariff increases by both the United States and China on cumulative tariffs paid by third countries. We show that the tariff hikes increase cumulative tariffs for other countries…
Does the belt and road initiative stimulate Chinese exports? Evidence from micro data
This paper evaluates firms' exporting responses to BRI and considers their heterogeneity in ownership types, product types, regional origin and trade mode. This is done by analysing firm–product–destination‐level customs data from 2008 to 2016. Our empirical results show that aggregate export behaviour increased significantly after BRI. However, ownership matters when evaluating firms' reactions, with SOEs and foreign firms benefitting, but priva…
Africa’s businesswomen – underfunded or underperforming
While the recent success of Africa’s ‘Lionesses’ – successful female entrepreneurs – is internationally celebrated, less is known about how liquidity can fuel the success of the ‘Lionesses’ and other businesswomen. Using information from a panel of over 800 male- and female-owned businesses in Ghana (ISSER-IGC survey), we capture a measure of underfunding, in addition to data on supplier credit, equity and other finance sources. Our regressions r…
Bring the Boys Back Home: The Impact of Foreign Divestments on Local Firms
Divestments by foreign multinationals are an important phenomenon that is largely neglected in the literature. We use firm‐level panel data from China to estimate the impact of such divestments on the performance of domestic firms in the local economy. To the best of our knowledge, there is no empirical study that has looked at these effects. Our results suggest that, overall, domestic firms may be able to benefit from divestments by foreign firm…
Economics (25 works) · Business (21 works) · Global trade and economics (20 works) · International Business and FDI (12 works) · Industrial organization (11 works) · Macroeconomics (11 works) · Foreign direct investment (10 works) · Firm Innovation and Growth (9 works) · Productivity (8 works) · Finance (7 works)