Product innovation by supplying in domestic and foreign markets

This paper uses European firm-level survey data to provide some robust empirical evidence that suppliers engaged in production to order (PTO) for foreign firms are more likely to introduce product innovations than those engaged in PTO for domestic firms, even when differences in size, R&D and productivity are controlled for. We propose a demand-driven theoretical explanation based on the interactions between an upstream producer of a specialized input and a downstream producer in a framework of incomplete contracts, agency frictions, and imperfect information.