Do intellectual property rights influence multinationals' manufacturing location decisions? My theoretical model indicates that countries with strong patent laws attract multinational activity, but only in sectors with relatively long product life cycles. By contrast, firms with short life-cycle technologies are insensitive, because offshore imitation is less likely to succeed before obsolescence. I document strong empirical regularities consistent with the model using a panel dataset on the global operations of US-based multinational firms and a new measure of product obsolescence. Moreover, my identification strategy allows me to isolate the causal effect of patent laws on multinational activity.

How global are the gains from innovation? When firms operate plants in multiple countries, technological improvements developed in one location may be shared with foreign sites for efficiency gain. We develop a model that accounts for such transfer and apply it to measure returns to R&D investment for a panel of US multinationals. Our estimates indicate that innovation increases performance at firm locations beyond the innovating site: the median multinational firm realizes abroad 20% of the return to its US R&D investment, revealing a spatial disconnect between the costs and potential gains of policies that encourage multinationals’ US innovation.