Alfredo Minerva (Università di Bologna) Lorenzo Casaburi (Università di Bologna) Valeria Gattai (Università di Bologna, ISESAO, Università Commerciale “L. Bocconi”)
Additional information is available for the following
registered author(s):
This paper revisits the empirical evidence about the link between firms’ performance and their international status, based on a large sample of Italian enterprises. To this purpose, we merged two waves of the Capitalia survey (1998-2000, and 2001-2003) retrieving firm level data for roughly 7,000 units. Three results stand out from our empirical exercise. First, firms that engage in the foreign production of final goods, in addition to export activities, are more productive than firms that only export abroad. Second, firms that engage in final goods off-shoring are more productive than firms that engage in inputs off-shoring. Third, in terms of the productivity dynamics over the period 1998-2003, exporters’ performance in Italy was not any better than the non-exporters’ one. Our results support the view that the better performance (in static terms) of globally engaged firms is chiefly due to the selection caused by the fixed costs associated to international operations.
Download Info
To download:
If you experience problems downloading a file, check if you have the
proper application to
view it first. Information about this may be contained
in the File-Format links below. In case of further problems read
the IDEAS help
page. Note that these files are not on the IDEAS
site. Please be patient as the files may be large.
Publisher Info
Paper provided by Fondazione Eni Enrico Mattei in its series Working Papers with number
2008.3.
Find related papers by JEL classification: F10 - International Economics - - Trade - - - General F20 - International Economics - - International Factor Movements and International Business - - - General L10 - Industrial Organization - - Market Structure, Firm Strategy, and Market Performance - - - General L20 - Industrial Organization - - Firm Objectives, Organization, and Behavior - - - General L60 - Industrial Organization - - Industry Studies: Manufacturing - - - General
This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports: