Comparative Performance of Indigenous and Multinational Firms Operating in Ireland

Ireland's attractiveness to foreign direct investment is linked to a range of factors including participation in the European Single Market, skilled and flexible labour force, business-friendly environment, competitive statutory and effective tax rates. The productivity gap between foreign-owned firms and Irish-owned firms has increased over time and is larger in services in comparison to manufacturing. Relative to Irish-owned firms, foreign-owned firms are more productive, pay higher wages, invest more in tangible and intangible assets. On average, relative to Irish-owned firms, foreign-owned firms export a larger proportion of their output and import more relative to their output. Foreign-owned firms export and import a significantly large number of products in comparison to Irish-owned firms, 2 to 3 times more in recent years. Foreign-owned firms export to a larger number of destinations and import from more countries both EEA and extra-EEA countries. The analysis also shows that foreign-owned firms are integrated in more complex production and trade networks with a higher number of product-country combinations per firm. An interesting feature is the more important integration of foreign-owned firms in extra-EEA trade while Irish-owned firms tend to trade predominantly with EEA countries (mainly the UK). The evidence indicates only very limited intra-industry and intra-region FDI spillovers. It appears that Irish-owned firms benefit in terms of their export intensity from the presence in the same industry of affiliates of multinationals based outside the EU. However, the presence of multinationals crowd-out the export performance of Irish-owned firms within the same region. While the presence in the same region of affiliates of multinationals based in other EU countries affects negatively the export performance of Irish-owned firms in manufacturing, the presence of affiliates of non-EU multinationals has a negative effect on the export performance of Irish-owned firms in services.