The role of relatedness and strategic linkages between domestic and MNE sectors in regional branching and resilience

Despite the key role of multinational enterprises (MNEs) in both international markets and domestic economies, there is no consensus on whether or how they positively impact their host economy. In particular, do MNEs foster the creation of new domestic firms through knowledge spillovers? In this study, we look at the impact of the presence of related MNE industries on the entry and exit of domestic export industries in Irish regions before, during, and after the 2008 financial crisis. Specifically, we are interested in whether the presence of MNEs in a region results in knowledge spillovers and the creation of new domestic export activities in related sectors. To quantify how related an industry is to a region's current export basket we deploy an existing cohesion variable, closeness, that measures the relatedness of a new industry to existing industries within a region. We also introduce a new variable, strategic closeness, which captures not only the relatedness of industries within a region but their own connectivity or embeddedness. We use a dataset containing all government-supported export firms in Ireland between 2006-2018. We find that the presence of related MNE industries is associated with the entry of new domestic activity, suggesting that Irish regions benefited from domestic-MNE linkages. However this relationship was temporarily lost after the financial crisis and only recently re-established, with domestic entry dependent on the presence of highly embedded MNE sectors. Furthermore, we find that related MNEs help protect domestic industries against exit after the crisis and thereby play a role in enhancing regional resilience.