The exploitation and development of intangible assets by multinational enterprises (MNEs): An empirical analysis of the foreign direct investment of United States and Japanese MNEs, 1974--1997

How do firms use home and foreign markets to exploit and develop their intangible assets? In contrast to the transaction-level analysis more commonly featured in extant international management literature, I focus on a firm's capabilities and idiosyncratic resources and analyze how firms exploit and develop their competitive advantages using intangible assets in both their home and foreign markets. I test several hypotheses while analyzing newly created panel datasets containing information on 191 US and 141 Japanese firms' investments in intangible assets and foreign direct investment (FDI) over a twenty-four year period (1974–1997). Unlike previous research, I use lagged values to disentangle the causal relationship between a firm's intangible assets and its FDI to specifically test the internalization theory prediction that a firm's intangible assets created in its home market are exploited abroad. Based on Granger's test of causality, I find robust support for the internalization theory for both Japanese and US MNEs. I also analyze whether MNEs may be more than just exploiters of home country knowledge or advantages and test for feedback. In my results, I fail to find support from either sample. This suggests that more empirical analysis is needed to confirm under what conditions MNEs acquire and use competencies developed throughout their global network. I examine the factors that lead firms to tap into foreign knowledge to augment their technological capabilities through foreign R&D. Based on random effects probit models, I find that non-dominant firm arguments provide a strategic rationale for the small percent of R&D that is undertaken outside a firm's home market. Finally, I use firms' Tobin's q ratios to examine the performance effects from a firm's foreign investments. Based on panel data regression models, I conclude that there are large differences between US and Japanese firms. For US firms, multinationality is consistently negatively valued by shareholders, while for Japanese firms, multinationality is positively valued by shareholders, but only after a firm has experience with subsidiaries in foreign countries. Overall, the findings in this dissertation reveal similar motives for foreign investment by US and Japanese firms (asset-exploitation) but quite different performance effects from these investments.