Documents Schäffler, Johannes 2 results

"Do investments in the Czech Republic lead to employment growth or employment losses in the German firms involved? To address this question, a unique database about German firms with foreign direct investment (FDI) in the Czech Republic and firms without FDI in any country has been established within the IAB-ReLOC project. By developing a new method for linking firm-level data with establishment-level data of the Institute for Employment Research (IAB), this database is now linked with the IAB employment data. As the exact dates of the investments in the Czech Republic are known, the employment development of firms with Czech affiliates and firms without FDI is compared for the same time periods. The analysis shows that the two observation groups actually develop differently. In the years after the investment, the employment of multinational enterprises (MNEs) in the home country shrinks relative to the employment of the reference group (non-MNEs). The negative trend continues for up to five years. However, not all types of jobs are affected adversely. The downward trend refers to medium- and low-skilled workers only, whereby the demand for high-skilled workers even increases after the investment."

"The labour market effects of foreign direct investments (FDI) are a topic of constant interest. However, research progress is hindered as most datasets applied in research on this topic suffer from selectivity with respect to firm size. To overcome this deficiency a unique dataset that covers the total population of German firms with FDI in the Czech Republic and their Czech affiliates has been created: the IAB-ReLOC data. Based on this dataset, two points of high relevance are addressed in this paper. First, by presenting the generation process of this unique dataset the paper wants to provide guidance for similar cross-border data compilation projects and for researchers working with the data. Second, new insights on unit nonresponse in a firm-level survey are revealed. Based on multi-level logit models, the influence of firm and interviewer characteristics and of FDI features on survey participation is analysed. The main result is that apart from firm size and interviewer involvement, the response behaviour is related to the distance to the German-Czech border and to the strength of the cross-border relationship. What concerns the two latter characteristics, differences between German and Czech firms are identified."