Firm-Specific Advantages Intra-Regional Sales and Performance of Multinational Enterprises

This paper is an extension of recent work that has examined the intra-regional sales of large multinational enterprises (MNEs). First, we examine the interaction between the performance of MNEs and four proxies for their firm-specific advantages (FSAs). This includes: firm size, knowledge (as represented by R&D), marketing ability, and industry type. We find that FSAs in R&D and service sector type are best exploited within the home region. In contrast, the FSA firm size is better exploited by global and bi-regional firms. Second, we find that a service MNE tends to be more home-region oriented and has a higher proportion of intra-regional sales than a manufacturing firm.