This paper studies foreign direct investment spillovers on the gender-related labour market practice of domestic firms, based on a unique firm-to-firm data set of Bangladesh’s textiles and garment sectors. The paper looks at the female employment of domestic firms that are directly and indirectly related to foreign- owned firms through supply chain linkages. These domestic firms are either the local suppliers or customers of foreign-owned firms, or they share local suppliers and customers with foreign-owned firms. The estimates show that domestic firms related to foreign-owned firms have significantly more female administrative workers, but not necessarily more female non-administrative workers, owing to the former participating in more firm-to-firm interactions.
This book is a valuable reference document for the study of the evolution of contemporary socioeconomic life, marked by radical changes in structures, behaviours, methods of production and consumption, and rules of the social game. The current changes are of a “revolutionary” nature and thus make possible the vision of the future, which is necessary to decide on investments (material or immaterial). The uncertain dominates. Optimistic thinkers or actors believe that insofar as nothing is safe, everything is possible. But we still have to understand what is desirable, necessary or possible, because opportunities and risks are linked. The analysis of key success factors that are, or have been, actually operational is therefore of the highest interest.
A long and well-established literature exists on the role of multinational enterprises (MNEs) in transferring technology around the globe, enhancing local productivity. However, we know very little about the impact of foreign direct investment (FDI) and multinational enterprises on gender policy and practice. In this research, we focus on the role of MNEs in potentially promoting female empowerment and gender equality in Brazil. First, the research performs a descriptive exercise on the gender composition and gender earnings gaps at MNEs versus domestic firms. Then, we ask whether workers moving from multinational to domestic firms can transfer information about gender practice, by exploring the relationship across domestic firms with various proportions of workers with previous experience in a multinational. Unfortunately, despite the many theoretical reasons to expect MNEs to support and transfer best practice in gender policy, these ideas are not borne out in the data. Multinational firms employ fewer women and exhibit higher gender earnings gaps than their domestic firm counterparts. For this reason, it is no surprise that domestic firms with high shares of former MNE workers are not different from domestic firms with fewer former MNE workers in terms of gender policy and practice. Our work emphasizes the need for domestic policy to enhance the status of women in the economy and the international community to support best practice in gender policy across all types of firms.
This paper constructs and analyses a set of novel indicators on gender equality in the business sector, which focus on multinational enterprises and foreign traders in Finland. The descriptive analysis reveals large differences in the share of women and men employed in the best paying professions, especially in multinationals. Dynamic analysis shows that foreign investment typically results in pay increases for males, while this is not true for women. These disparities are strongest among managers and professionals working in the most profitable firms. A blueprint is provided for linking business statistics and social statistics to enable analyses of gender inequalities in the labour market.
The current stage of globalization involves geographically dispersed research and development (R&D) investments that are not confined to advanced economies. These cross-border R&D investments are driven by multinational enterprises’ (MNEs’) strategies for exploring and/or exploiting foreign locations. In this paper, we analyse location choice and the moderating effect of project-level investment strategy (i.e. exploration or exploitation) and type of host economy (i.e. advanced or emerging) on the importance of the innovation framework and local innovation capabilities. Our analysis of 588 R&D-related foreign direct investment (FDI) projects in the pharmaceutical and biotech industries during the 2006–2016 period reveals that whereas a host country’s innovation framework and capability overall do affect the location decision, their ultimate effects are conditional on the combination of project-level investment strategy and type of economy. Our findings have policy implications for FDI policies aiming at enhancing linkages between MNEs and local actors and national science, technology, innovation and educational policies and programmes.
