Professor Pol Antràs has now published his comprehensive new book Global Production available through Princeton University Press.
From the Princeton University Press website:
Global Production is the first book to provide a fully comprehensive overview of the complicated issues facing multinational companies and their global sourcing strategies. Few international trade transactions today are based on the exchange of finished goods; rather, the majority of transactions are dominated by sales of individual components and intermediary services. Many firms organize global production around offshoring parts, components, and services to producers in distant countries, and contracts are drawn up specific to the parties and distinct legal systems involved. Pol Antràs examines the contractual frictions that arise in the international system of production and how these frictions influence the world economy.
Antràs discusses the inevitable complications that develop in contract negotiation and execution. He provides a unified framework that sheds light on the factors helping global firms determine production locations and other organizational choices. Antràs also implements a series of systematic empirical tests, based on recent data from the U.S. Customs and Census Offices, which demonstrate the relevance of contractual factors in global production decisions.
Using an integrated approach, Global Production is an excellent resource for researchers, graduate students, and advanced undergraduates interested in the inner workings of international economics and trade.
Table of Contents
Preface vii
I Introduction 1
1 Made in the World 3
2 Workhorse Models 28
II Location 57
3 Contracts and Export Behavior 59
4 Contracts and Global Sourcing 94
5 Contracts and Sourcing: Evidence 128
III Internalization 167
6 The Transaction-Cost Approach 169
7 The Property-Rights Approach 192
8 Internalization: Empirical Evidence 217
IV Appendixes 263
Bibliography 307
Index 319
Global Production: Firms, Contracts, and Trade Structure appears in the series of CREI Lectures in Macroeconomics.
Pol Antràs is Robert G. Ory Professor of Economics at Harvard University, where he has taught since 2003. He is also a Research Associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER), where he served as Director of the International Trade and Organization (ITO) Working Group. He is also a Research Affiliate at the Centre for Economic Policy Research (CEPR) and is a member of CESifo’s Research Network. Antràs’ teaching and research fields are international economics and applied theory. His most recent work is focused on the analysis of global value chains and on the interplay between trade, inequality and costly redistribution. A citizen of Spain, Antràs received his BA and MSc in Economics from Universitat Pompeu Fabra in Barcelona, and his PhD in Economics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 2003.