Globalization and knowledge spillover: international direct investment,exports and patents

In this study three possible determinants of the increase in the ratio between skilled and unskilled workers are tested together: R&D, organisational change, and foreign direct investment. After analysing the literature, these hypotheses are jointly tested using a SUR estimate. The results – regarding a panel of 488 Italian manufacturing firms over the period 1989–1997 – suggest the statistical significance of the impact of organisational change, while they tend to exclude a direct relation between R&D spending and skill upgrading. With reference to FDIs, the nature of the data and the results do not permit the exclusion of their possible influence.     

The productivity impact of R&D investment: are high-tech sectors still ahead?

Our aim is to investigate the relationship between a firm's R&D expenditures and its productivity, looking at sectoral peculiarities. We use a unique longitudinal database consisting of 1809 US and European manufacturing and service firms over the period 1990–2008. Our main findings can be summarised as follows. Consistently with previous literature, the knowledge stock has a significant positive impact on a firm's productivity. More interestingly, the coefficient turns out to be significantly larger in the R&D-user services and high-tech manufacturing sectors than in the non-high-tech manufacturing sectors. Contrary to the ‘latecomer advantage’ approach, these outcomes suggest that firms in high-tech sectors are still ahead in terms of impact on productivity of R&D investments.     

Investor protection and value creation in cross‐border M&As by emerging economies

Previous research investigating cross‐border M&As (CBM&As) by emerging economies (EEs) provided contrasting evidence on the value enhancement role of investor protection rules. We conduct a new empirical study to address the issue with an accurate sample selection of bidders from more homogeneous developing countries and transactions on developed countries only. Our analysis over the 1997–2012 period on a sample of M&A deals by companies from Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa (BRICS) does not provide evidence that better institutional standards in the destination country are rewarded by the local stock market. We find that foreign governance quality is not associated with positive excess stock returns around the announcement date. Rather, these returns are affected by firm‐specific and deal‐specific factors, such as the relative deal size, the listed status of the target company, and the acquirer size. Comparison with other studies on excess returns for emerging markets (including BRICs) suggests that the results could be driven at least partially by country choice.     

Is demand-pulled innovation equally important in different groups of firms?

Previous empirical literature has tested the demand-pull hypothesisand found that innovation may be driven by output. Using a balancedpanel of 216 Italian manufacturing firms (1995–2000) andchecking for the path-dependent nature of R&D we find arole of sales in inducing R&D. However, the demand-pulleffect plays a varying role for different sub-samples of firms.Exporting firms, liquidity-constrained firms, unsubsidised firmsand those not heading a group seem to be sensitive to salesin deciding R&D. These results have been obtained usinga Least Squares Dummy Variable Corrected Estimator, a recentpanel-data technique suitable for small samples.     

Young firms and innovation: A microeconometric analysis

This paper discusses the sources of product innovation in young innovative companies (YICs), here defined as firms engaged in product innovation and with less than 8 years of activity. In particular, we look at in-house and external R&D and at the acquisition of external technology in its embodied and disembodied components. These input–output relationships are tested on a sample of 2713 innovative Italian firms. A sample-selection approach is applied to study both the determinants of product innovation and the factors affecting the intensity of innovation.Results show that in-house R&D is linked to the propensity to introduce product innovation both in mature firms and YICs; however, innovation intensity in the YICs is mainly dependent on embodied technical change from external sources, while in-house R&D does not play a significant role.     

Knowledge misappropriation risks and contractual complexity in entrepreneurial ventures’ non-equity alliances

Small Business Economics - This paper explores the role of anticipated knowledge misappropriation risks in contract design in non-equity alliances involving high-tech entrepreneurial ventures. We...     

The transatlantic productivity gap: Is R&D the main culprit?

The literature has pointed to different causes to explain the productivity gap between the EU and the US in the last decades. This paper tests the hypothesis that the lower European productivity performance in comparison with the US can be explained not only by a lower level of corporate R&D investment but also by a lower capacity to translate R&D investment into productivity gains. The proposed microeconometric estimates are based on a unique longitudinal database covering the period 1990–2008 and comprising 1,809 US and EU companies for a total of 16,079 observations. Consistent with previous literature, we find robust evidence of a significant impact of R&D on productivity; however, using different estimation techniques, the R&D coefficients for the US firms always turn out to be significantly higher. To see to what extent these transatlantic differences in the R&D/productivity relationship may be related to the different sectoral structures in the US and the EU, we differentiated the analysis by sectors. The result is that bothin manufacturing, services and high‐tech manufacturing sectors US firms are more able to translate their R&D investments into productivity increases.     

Technological and organizational changes as determinants of the skill bias: evidence from the Italian machinery industry

Recent empirical literature has introduced the ‘Skill Biased Organizational Change’ (SBOC) hypothesis, according to which organizational change can be considered as one of the main causes of the skill bias (increase in the number of highly skilled workers) exhibited by manufacturing employment in developed countries. This paper focuses on the importance of the SBOC with respect to the more traditional ‘Skill Biased Technological Change’ in driving the skill composition of workers in the Italian machinery sector. A dynamic panel data analysis is proposed which uses a unique firm‐level dataset. The results show that both skilled and unskilled workers are negatively affected by technological change, while organizational change—which in turn may be linked to new technologies—is positively linked to skilled workers. Copyright © 2005 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Family firms and internationalization: An exploratory study on high-tech entrepreneurial ventures

This paper empirically explores a highly relevant, although poorly investigated topic: internationalization of family firms that operate in high-tech industries. Specifically, we compare internationalization of family and nonfamily entrepreneurial ventures in these industries. Relying on prior studies on internationalization of family firms, we speculate on how the specificities of high-tech industries shape the advantages and disadvantages of family entrepreneurial ventures in pursuing internationalization as compared with their nonfamily peers. In the empirical part of the paper, through a rigorous quantitative analysis of unique data from 264 Italian high-tech entrepreneurial ventures, we explore whether in high-tech industries family entrepreneurial ventures are more (or less) likely to pursue internationalization than their nonfamily counterparts. Surprisingly enough, our econometric estimates indicate that, in high-tech industries, family entrepreneurial ventures exhibit a higher internationalization propensity than their nonfamily peers.