Knowledge accumulation, and productivity:: Evidence from plant-level data for Ireland

This paper investigates whether knowledge accumulating activities, such as exporting, R&D, or worker training, can enhance plants' productivity. To this end, we use plant-level panel data for Irish manufacturing. Our results importantly indicate that productivity enhancing effects of these factors are found only for domestic firms, but not for foreign multinationals located in Ireland. We postulate a number of potential reasons inherent to multinational activity possibly driving this result.