event
Vilfredo Pareto Research Seminar
Tuesday
05
April
Miklós Koren

Foreign Firms and Foreign Managers

Miklós Koren, Professor of Economics at Central European University
, -

Maison de la paix (Geneva), Petal 1 Room S5

This seminar is held jointly with the Geneva Trade and Development Workshop (GTDW).

The Vilfredo Pareto Research Seminar is the Economics department's weekly seminar, featuring external speakers in all areas of economics.

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As part of the Vilfredo Pareto Research Seminar series, the International Economics Department at the Graduate Institute is pleased to invite you to a public talk given by Miklós Koren, Professor of Economics at Central European University (CEU).

He will present his work, joint with Almos Telegdy, titled Foreign Firms and Foreign Managers.

Abstract: Foreign direct investment is often associated with many positive outcomes on the host firms. In a variety of countries and time periods, multinational enterprises are measured to be larger and more productive than others. They are also more likely to trade and pay higher wages. Moreover, firms acquired by foreign investors are estimated to improve in all these dimensions. We study what role foreign managers play in the benefits of foreign ownership. Using a long Hungarian firm and manager panel, we show that most benefits are associated with foreign managers, not ownership per se. We find that firms that replace their CEO after foreign acquisition grow faster in employment and output. Foreign managers, in particular, are also associated with increased exporting. This suggests that the international mobility of managers is crucial to reap the benefits of foreign direct investment. More broadly, our results emphasize the role of personal connections and knowledge embodied in managers for firm performance.

 

About the speaker

Miklós Koren is a Professor of Economics at Central European University (CEU). He is the founder of the Business Analytics MSc program and the CEU MicroData research group. His research focuses on international trade and economic development. He publishes regularly in leading international academic journals, and he has participated in numerous international research projects, including a large-scale Starting Grant of the European Research Council. He is a recipient of the Peter Kenen Fellowhsip and the Nicholas Káldor Prize. Professor Koren received his Ph.D. from Harvard University in 2005. He also holds an M.A. from Central European University (2000) and a B.A. from Corvinus University Budapest (1999). Before coming to CEU, he worked at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York and at Princeton University.