Differences In Relative Endowments Research Articles

The organization of Eastern merchant empires

In the sixteenth century, European countries engaged in long-distance trade with the East. Despite sharing the same objectives and technology, Portugal opted for a crown monopoly, England, the Netherlands, and Sweden franchised trade to private merchants, whereas in Denmark and France, king and merchants shared control. The financial condition of the crown appears to have been relevant for the monarchs' decision. I provide an economic mechanism to illuminate the historical variation in terms of the differences in relative endowments of king and merchants within each country. I also explore the implications of control allocation using archival data on labor compensation and shipping technology. Differences in the long run performance of merchant empires suggest a major impact of organization.

Estimating the Knowledge-Capital Model of the Multinational Enterprise: Comment

The knowledge-capital approach to the multinational enterprise as outlined in this paper is operational and yields clear, testable hypotheses. It is more useful than some other theories of FDI, such as the transactions cost approach to multinational enterprises. Hypotheses are tested regarding the importance of multinational activity between countries as a function of certain characteristics of those countries, particularly size, size differences, relative endowment differences, trade and investment costs, and certain interactions among these variables as predicted by theory. Data fit the model well, lending considerable support to the theory. Outward investment from a source country to affiliates in a host country is increasing the sum of their economic sizes, their similarity in size, the relative skilled-labor abundance of the parent nation, and the interaction between size and relative endowment differences.