This paper compares the industry characteristics that determine U.S. export competitiveness with those that affect the export competitiveness of U.S. multinationals. Higher R&D and human capital intensities are associated with high U.S. shares in exports and, more strongly with high U.S. multinationals' shares, and higher labor content with low shares. Within the multinationals, high R&D intensity leads to a larger share of the firms' exports being supplied from the U.S. parent. The higher the labor intensity and the level of advertising expenditures in an industry, the larger the proportion of the firms' exports supplied by the foreign affiliates.

National Price Levels and the Prices of Tradables and Nontradables This paper examines changes in national price levels and prices of tra— dables and nontradables and relates them to changes in variables found earlier to be associated with price level differences among countries. Across countries, national price levels increase systematically with the level of a country's per capita income, and the ratios of tradables to nontra— dables prices decrease. Over time, increases in per capita income are generally associated with increases in price levels in the industrial countries, although the opposite relationship tended to prevail among deve-loping countries. Increases in income are associated with declines in the ratio of tradables to nontradables price levels more consistently than with the increases in general price levels. Increases in the exchange value of a currency are also associated with declines in the price levels for tradables relative to nontradables. Countries with price levels that were high or low relative to those predicted by the structural equations tended to move toward those predicted levels.

Dennis M. Bushe, Irving B. Kravis, Robert E. Lipsey, Prices, Activity, and Machinery Exports: An Analysis Based on New Price Data, The Review of Economics and Statistics, Vol. 68, No. 2 (May, 1986), pp. 248-255