institutional exceptions on global projects a process model this inductive study offers an examination of 23 cases in which informants from firms engaged in large scale global projects reported unforeseen costs after failing to comprehend cognitive cultural normative and or regulative institutions in an unfamiliar host societal context the study builds on the conceptual framework of institutional theory the findings which include propositions and a generic narrative model contribute to theoretical knowledge of how institutional exceptions arise how they are resolved and how they typically involve three general phases ignorance sensemaking and response the findings also articulate the kinds of institutional transaction costs that an entrant incurs in each of the three phases and the conditions that lead to the growth of these costs

do r d tax credits work evidence from a panel of countries 1979 1997 this paper examines the impact of fiscal incentives on the level of r d investment an econometric model of r d investment is estimated using a new panel of data on tax changes and r d spending in nine oecd countries over a 19 year period 1979 1997 we find evidence that tax incentives are effective in increasing r d intensity this is true even after allowing for permanent country specific characteristics world macro shocks and other policy influences we estimate that a 10 fall in the cost of r d stimulates just over a 1 rise in the level of r d in the short run and just under a 10 rise in r d in the long run

exporting does sales volume make a difference this research examines the effect that the size of a firm has on export activities perceived problems in exporting and attitudes toward exporting the results indicate that broad generalizations concerning the size of firms and exporting appear to be inappropriate

r d internationalization and growth of newly listed firms european evidence the initial public offering ipo is an important stage in the life cycle of privately held and entrepreneurial firms for innovative firms eager to capitalize on their technological advances an ipo represents a springboard for a rapid international expansion of sales however there is little research on the longer term post ipo strategic evolution of newly listed companies including their internationalization we build on international entrepreneurship and dynamic capabilities perspectives and examine interrelationships between r d exporting and growth of newly listed firms in the uk germany italy and france using panel data for 1110 ipos during the period 1985 2004 we found that r d intensity is an important antecedent factor for internationalization of sales both r d and export intensities have a positive effect on the sales growth of newly listed firms however r d intensity is path dependent and is determined by levels of accumulated intangible assets and debt in terms of time dynamics the growth of ipo firms is at its highest level just after the float whereas export intensity increases as ipo firms mature we conclude that managers and ipo investors need to take into account not only growth opportunities but also past innovation strategies and financial constraints on managers strategic choices

on the relationship between firm size and export intensity export marketing literature supports the view that firm size is positively related to export intensity although the empirical findings have been mixed a number of theoretical arguments are used to support this proposition i e international marketing economies of scale limited managerial and financial resources of small firms decisionmaker s risk perception based on a large survey of the italian manufacturing industry the article falsifies the proposition and challenges some widely held assumptions in export marketing literature

learning across geographic space pro market reforms multinationalization strategy and profitability building on economic geography and knowledge based theory i argue that pro market reforms augment the profitability of firms by increasing their competitiveness and market knowledge however i propose that this effect is greater for firms that operate internationally firms that operate in more advanced markets and firms that become multinationals before reforms are implemented this is because such firms acquire market knowledge abroad that they can use when responding to reforms at home giving them a head start advantage over other local firms the analyses of a panel of the largest 500 latin american companies from 1989 to 2008 provide support for these arguments

emerging themes in international business research this study is motivated by two research questions 1 which recent contributions have been driving the research agenda in international business 2 which emerging themes in the literature are likely to set the stage for future work to examine these questions the study examined scholarly work in international business over the time period 1996 2006 in six leading international business journals journal of international business studies management international review journal of world business international marketing review journal of international marketing and international business review next a delphi study of the most prolific authors in these journals over the same time period was conducted to delineate a future research agenda in international business addressing these two research questions provides us with a more complete understanding of the progress made to date in international business research and provides a glimpse of the future

capabilities as a mediator linking resources and the international performance of entrepreneurial firms in an emerging economy this study investigates an under researched topic the relationships between capabilities resources and international performance among entrepreneurial firms in an emerging economy we combine the resource based view of the firm and the capability building perspective of rent creation to shed light on the crucial role of firm specific capabilities that transform key resources into performance outcomes employing a large sample of chinese entrepreneurial firms our investigation demonstrates that while the resources of institutional capital and managerial ties are important in the internationalization effort their effects on international performance are channeled through each firm s adaptive capability this adaptive capability is the firm s ability to coordinate recombine and allocate resources to meet the different requirements of foreign markets specifically our research is able to demonstrate support for the mediating role of capabilities in the relationship between resources and international performance the implications of these findings for theoretical development and future research are discussed

cash crop choice and income dynamics in rural areas evidence for post crisis indonesia in this article we investigate the factors affecting levels and growth of incomes in rural indonesia following the crisis of 1997 1998 in particular we investigate the relative roles of nonfarm incomes and productivity improvements achieved via changes in crops versus improvements on the same crops on income dynamics framing the article in the context of an optimal labor allocation model relying on unique household panel data from central sulawesi and using advanced panel econometric methods we find that local innovations related to the adoption and intensification of new cash crop varieties more specifically the shift from coffee to cocoa production can explain a substantial part of the observed post crisis developments causal estimates of the effect of growing cocoa suggest that households were on average able to achieve about 14 higher income levels during the post crisis period compared to the planting of other crops most notably coffee also our results demonstrate the importance of engagement in nonfarm activities for household income growth comparative analyses using a nationally representative survey suggest that similar processes are at play in other parts of indonesia

routine microprocesses and capability learning in international new ventures drawing on the distinction between the ostensive aspects abstract patterns and performative aspects specific actions of organizational routines the paper offers a micro level explanation of capability learning in international new ventures invs that is firms that internationalize actively from inception the paper argues that variability in the performative aspects of internationalization routines is associated with improvisational learning and new capability development whereas variability in the ostensive aspects is associated with trial and error learning and existing capability improvement furthermore psychic distance moderates these relationships low psychic distance facilitates both improvisation and trial and error learning high psychic distance frustrates learning of both types moderate psychic distance makes the success of both learning forms more likely but only for more experienced invs the paper also argues that social capital may mitigate the negative effects of high psychic distance it contributes to the extant literature by providing a micro level explanation of how invs accomplish capability learning and avoid wasteful learning efforts and by theorizing the moderating effects of psychic distance on the relationships between routine microprocesses and capability learning

the experience factor in foreign market entry behavior of service firms the paper examines the effect of international experience on service firms selection of foreign markets and entry modes the investigation utilizes survey date from 151 united states based service firms results on market selection suggest that as their experience increases and becomes geographically more diversified service firms tend to choose markets that are culturally less similar to their home country on entry mode choice the paper departs from traditional linear conceptualizations and hypothesizes a u shaped relationship between experience and propensity for integrated entry modes results generally support the hypothesis the paper explains these findings and describes how service firms resemble and differ from manufacturing firms in their foreign market entry behavior

the effectiveness of tax incentives for r d i in developing countries the case of argentina abstract there is increasing interest in developing countries in granting tax incentives in order to encourage private investment in research development and innovation r d i however evidence on the effectiveness of such schemes in achieving policy goals in weak innovation systems contexts is still very scarce this paper aims at narrowing this knowledge gap by focusing on the effects of a tax credit scheme for promoting firm level innovation investment in argentina the analysis applies dynamic panel data techniques to a novel dataset merging several waves of the national innovation survey collected by the national institute of statistics and censuses the results suggest that the elasticity of r d i investment to its user cost of capital is a greater than 1 in absolute terms which implies that the intervention has been effective in increasing firms innovation efforts however effects vary depending on the type of innovation investment being subsidized industrial sector and size of the firm moreover when innovation investment is divided into innovation related capital goods expenditures and only r d the results suggest that the absolute value of the elasticity for the r d component of the innovation investment is less than 1 these heterogeneous effects should be exploited for further policy design

transforming disadvantages into advantages developing country mnes in the least developed countries we analyze the advantages and disadvantages of developing country multinational enterprises mnes in comparison with developed country mnes developing country mnes tend to be less competitive than their developed country counterparts partly because they suffer the disadvantage of operating in home countries with underdeveloped institutions we argue that this disadvantage can become an advantage when both types of mne operate in countries with difficult governance conditions because developing country mnes are used to operating in such conditions the empirical analysis shows that although developing country mnes rarely appear among the largest mnes in the world they are more prevalent among the largest foreign firms in the least developed countries ldcs especially in ldcs with poorer regulatory quality and lower control of corruption

the impact of coffee price changes on rural households in uganda employing household survey data covering the periods 1992 1993 1995 1996 and 1999 2000 this article shows for the case of uganda that a coffee market liberalization followed by a price boom was associated with substantial reductions in poverty which could even be sustained when prices went down again coffee is not planted by the richest farmers and the gains from higher coffee prices accrued to poorer and richer coffee farmers alike nor were poorer farmers hurt disproportionately when prices fell in addition we find strong spillovers from coffee production to other agriculture which tends to favor the poor and to nonagricultural activities these multiplier effects are concentrated in coffee regions in an economic environment characterized by a booming agricultural sector coffee farmers were able to accommodate the negative price shock in particular through agricultural diversification general agricultural growth also cushioned possible negative multiplier effects in coffee regions overall the case of coffee in uganda thus lends support to the view that agricultural trade liberalization is beneficial for the poor

host country corruption and the organization of hq subsidiary relationships multinational enterprises mnes operating in more corrupt host than home countries face actual costs related to processing information for decision making and lack of local legitimacy and potential reputation and legal costs in case of corruption scandals drawing on the organizational perspective of corruption we argue that greater subsidiary autonomy helps minimize these costs however headquarter hq subsidiary communication weakens the autonomy based advantages for minimizing legitimacy costs and mnes experience in relatively corrupt countries weakens the advantages for minimizing information processing costs our analysis of 261 italian foreign subsidiaries in 25 host countries confirms most of our arguments except the moderating effect of mne experience our findings contribute to research on corruption and fdi weak institutional contexts and mne strategies as well as the literature on hq subsidiary relationship

explaining the formation of international new ventures the limits of theories from international business research abstract international new ventures invs represent a growing and important type of start up an inv is defined as a business organization that from inception seeks to derive significant competitive advantage from the use of resources and the sale of outputs in multiple countries oviatt and mcdougall 1994 their increasing prevalence and important role in international competition indicates a need for greater understanding of these new ventures oviatt and mcdougall 1994 logitech as described in a case study by alahuhta 1990 is a vivid example of an inv its founders were from two different countries and had a global vision for the company from its inception the venture which produces peripheral devices for personal computers established headquarters in both switzerland and the u s manufacturing and r d were split between the u s and switzerland and then quickly spread to taiwan and ireland the venture s first commercial contract was with a japanese company using 24 case studies of invs we found that their formation process is not explained by existing theories from the field of international business specifically neither monopolistic advantage theory product cycle theory stage theory of internationalization oligopolistic reaction theory nor internalization theory can explain the formation process of invs these theories fail because they assume that firms become international long after they have been formed and they therefore highlight large mature firms they also focus too much on the firm level and largely ignore the individual and small group level of analysis i e the entrepreneur and his or her network of business alliances we propose that an explanation for the formation process of invs must answer three questions 1 who are the founders of invs 2 why do these entrepreneurs choose to compete internationally rather than just in their home countries and 3 what form do their international business activities take who are the founders of invs we argue that founders of invs are individuals who see opportunities from establishing ventures that operate across national borders they are alert to the possibilities of combining resources from different national markets because of the competencies networks knowledge and background that they have developed from their earlier activities following the logic of the resource based view of the firm we argue that the possession of these competencies is not matched by other entrepreneurs only the entrepreneur possessing these competencies is able to combine a particular set of resources across national borders and form a given inv why do these entrepreneurs choose to compete internationally rather than just in their home countries the founders of invs recognize they must create international business competencies from the time of venture formation otherwise the venture may become path dependent on the development of domestic competencies and the entrepreneur will find it difficult to change strategic direction when international expansion eventually becomes necessary as the founder of one inv explained the advantage of starting internationally is that you establish an international spirit from the very beginning mamis 1989 38 what form do their international business activities take founders of invs prefer to use hybrid structures i e strategic alliances and networks for their international activities as a way to overcome the usual poverty of resources at the time of start up this study has important implications for the practice of management in financing decisions relating to invs venture capitalists and other venture financiers should look for entrepreneurs who have a global vision international business competence and an established international network when entrepreneurs start invs they should create hybrid structures to preserve scarce resources finally given the path dependence of competence development founders of new ventures should consider whether establishing a domestic new venture with plans to later internationalize will be as successful a strategy as establishing a new venture that is international from inception

a review of research on the growth of multinational enterprises a penrosean lens abstract we provide a comprehensive review of the growth of multinational enterprises mnes based on a quarter century 25 years of scholarly international business publications we synthesize research insights on the determinants of the growth of mnes through the lens of penrose s theory of firm growth which is the most influential theoretical perspective on firm growth the review takes stock of the research findings on the facilitators constraints and the trajectory of growth of mnes and elaborates on the commonalities and differences between research on the growth of mnes that draws on penrose s theory and research that does not this comparison highlights the opportunity to build an internally coherent theory of the growth of mnes that is a theory that connects what an mne is to what determines an mne s growth it also indicates that past research placed a strong emphasis on exogenous factors e g cross country distances as key constraints on growth even though the penrosean lens suggests a close consideration of endogenous factors that drive international growth as well as endogenizing the ostensibly exogenous growth determinants the review highlights the importance of firm specific managerial knowledge and learning which shapes the direction of the growth of mnes and ensures its administrative coherence

how effective are fiscal incentives for r d a review of the evidence this paper surveys the econometric evidence on the effectiveness of fiscal incentives for r d we describe the effects of tax systems in oecd countries on the user cost of r d the current position changes over time and across different firms in different countries we describe and criticize the methodologies used to evaluate the effect of the tax system on

selling at the farmgate or traveling to market using detailed survey data from uganda this article examines whether coffee producers sell to itinerant traders or directly to markets where they can get a higher price but must incur a transport cost we find that selling to the market is more likely when the quantity sold is large and the market is close by wealthy farmers are less likely to sell to the market possibly because the shadow value of their time is higher but if they have a large quantity of coffee for sale they are more likely to sell it to the market they are also more likely to travel to a distant market these findings are consistent with their better ability to pay for public transportation we find no evidence that the decision to sell at the farmgate is driven by a self control motive

seeking commonalities or avoiding differences re conceptualizing distance and its effects on internationalization decisions past research established distance s key influence on internationalization however theoretical issues methodological challenges and inconsistent results hinder scholarship on why distance plays such an influential role to address these problems we draw from cognitive research on similarity comparisons to re conceptualize distance and test a model of internationalization decisions analyzing the verbal protocols of executives considering a series of internationalization opportunities we demonstrate that over and above objective distance indicators considerations that reduce distance commonalities and considerations that augment distance differences have distinct effects on decisions of where when and how to internationalize as such our study contributes new insights for understanding the nature and effects of distance across different dimensions of distance and internationalization decisions moreover internationalization theories have come to emphasize different theoretical rationales for explaining the influential role of distance on different decisions by integrating these rationales together with the notion that distance reducing commonalities and distance augmenting differences have distinct implications for internationalization decisions we introduce the notion that it is not only the addition of distance considerations that matters but also the directionality of such changes doing so our study points to new theoretical and methodological insights to help address prior criticisms and advance future research

creating value through mutual commitment to business network relationships a structural model of business relationship development in a business network context is formulated and tested on delta from the european international marketing and purchasing imp project the e

the effects of public r d subsidies on firms innovation activities the case of eastern germany this study analyzes the effects of public r d policy schemes on the innovation activities of firms in eastern germany the main question in this context is whether public funds stimulate r d activities or simply crowd out privately financed r d empirically we investigate the average causal effects of all public r d schemes in eastern germany using a nonparametric matching approach compared to the case in which no public financial means are provided it turns out that firms increase their innovation activities by about four percentage points

the globalization of swedish mnes empirical evidence and theoretical explanations we define globalization as the geographical dispersion of multinational enterprises mnes value chain in combination with increased inter regional coordination and use detailed firm level data to show that 12 of sweden s 17 largest manufacturing companies indeed are global by developing a globalization process model we theoretically argue in contrast to much of the existing literature that globalization may evolve to a more general phenomenon the globalization process is tortuous as mnes have to develop dynamic capabilities which make them gradually more competitive and able to cope with varying institutional contexts empirical testing on globalization of mnes originating from other home countries is suggested

an organizational model for understanding internationalization processes we propose an organizational model for understanding internationalization processes we argue that these processes differ with the type of organization we compare the internationalization processes of three organization types the mass production organization the disaggregated production organization and the project based organization each organization type responds differently to critical elements of the internationalization process namely the focus of entry the degree of presence and physical presence requirements in the foreign market which in turn influence what modal forms are adopted as the process progresses consequently we observe different approaches to resource commitment in the foreign market over time

resource dependency and institutional theory perspectives on direct and indirect export choices this article develops and tests resource dependency and institutional theory arguments to explain two choices facing sme owner managers 1 the decision whether to export or not and 2 if the firm exports the choice between a direct to customers abroad and an indirect using another firm as intermediary export mode binomial logistic regressions on our sample of 871 dutch smes suggest that institutional theory perspectives owner managers perception of the increased international presence of their domestic competitors customers and suppliers and perceptions of increased use of foreign suppliers explain the decision to export while resource dependency theory arguments owner managers perception of the favorability of access to knowledge and technology of production costs and of access to capital in the home market guide the choice between direct and indirect export modes

the decision maker and export entry and expansion this paper examines the varied empirical findings of the relationship between firm individual characteristics and foreign entry expansion behavior the results support the view that such activity is neither exclusively determined by structural or managerial factors and is really the result of interaction between both types of variables the paper proposes that foreign entry and expansion can best be understood as an adoption of innovation type behavior

evaluating the impact of r d tax credits on innovation a microeconometric study on canadian firms this study examines the effect of r d tax credits on innovation activities of canadian manufacturing firms over the 1997 1999 period the federal and provincial r d tax credit programs were used by more than one third of all manufacturing firms and by close to two thirds of firms in high technology sectors we investigate the average effect of r d tax credits on a series of innovation indicators such as number of new products sales with new products originality of innovation etc using a non parametric matching approach compared to a hypothetical situation in the absence of r d tax credits recipients of tax credits show significantly better scores on most but not all performance indicators we therefore conclude that tax credits increase the r d engagement at the firm level and that the r d activities induced by fiscal incentives lead to additional innovation output

agricultural tradables and economic recovery in uganda the limitations of structural adjustment in practice abstract uganda s economic reform program has been widely regarded as a success story for structural adjustment nevertheless a large trade deficit persists shored up by inflows of aid and private remittances the poor performance of the agricultural tradables sector is presented as the key explanation for this trade imbalance two main reasons for this poor performance are found to be the failure to liberalize producer prices quickly and the failure to overcome early institutional resistance to reforms of marketing arrangements uganda s recovery is therefore much less impressive than it appears and the sustainability of the now heavily aid dependent economy must remain in serious doubt

causes of the difficulties in internationalization we study the causes of the difficulties faced by firms when they internationalize in search of new markets we build on the resource based theory to argue that the difficulties in internationalization can be separated into three main sets based on their relationship to advantage loss of advantage provided by resources transferred abroad creation of a disadvantage by resources transferred abroad and lack of complementary resources required to operate abroad in each set we further distinguish difficulties that are specific to a firm from those that are common to a set of firms we argue that only a few of the resulting types of difficulties of internationalization are exclusive to the cross border expansion and propose solutions that address the root cause of each type

international expansion through flexible replication learning from the internationalization experience of ikea business organizations may expand internationally by replicating a part of their value chain such as a sales and marketing format in other countries however little is known regarding how such international replicators build a format for replication or how they can adjust it in order to adapt to local environments and under the impact of new learning to illuminate these issues we draw on a longitudinal in depth study of swedish home furnishing giant ikea involving more than 70 interviews we find that ikea has developed organizational mechanisms that support an ongoing learning process aimed at frequent modification of the format for replication another finding is that ikea treats replication as hierarchical lower level features marketing efforts pricing etc are allowed to vary across ikea stores in response to market based learning while higher level features fundamental values vision etc are replicated in a uniform manner across stores and change only very slowly if at all in response to learning flexible replication we conclude by discussing the factors that influence the approach to replication adopted by an international replicator

entrepreneurial growth the role of international knowledge acquisition as moderated by firm age in line with repeated recent calls for research on specific forms of growth rather than on an undifferentiated notion of total growth our study contributes to the understanding of entrepreneurial growth by this we mean growth through expansion into new geographic markets and or via the introduction of new products or services building on penrose s theory of the growth of the firm and on the research streams she has in part inspired we investigate the impact of knowledge acquisition from international markets on entrepreneurial growth both at home and abroad we further suggest that the effects of international knowledge acquisition on entrepreneurial growth will vary with firm age utilizing longitudinal data on 138 small and medium sized enterprises smes we find that the acquisition of knowledge from international markets fuels growth through market development and that this effect is stronger for international expansion than domestic expansion our results also show that firm age negatively moderates the relationship between international knowledge acquisition and entrepreneurial growth via the introduction of new products or services specifically international knowledge acquisition has a positive effect on growth via new products services development in young firms but a negative effect in mature firms we assume this reflects changes over time in how international knowledge is managed

international experience and fdi location choices of chinese firms the moderating effects of home country government support and host country institutions we examine the extent to which chinese government support of foreign direct investment fdi projects and host country institutional environments interact with prior entry experience by chinese firms and how this interrelationship affects fdi undertaken by chinese firms we hypothesize that home country government support and well established host country institutions enhance organizational capabilities to take risks in fdi as such they reduce the need to accumulate experiential knowledge and capabilities relating to entering host countries based on prior entry experience in a particular country when undertaking follow up investment projects using a unique hand collected panel data set of chinese publicly listed firms during 2002 2009 we find that home government support and well developed host country institutions reduce the importance of prior entry experience and significantly increase the likelihood of fdi entry into a host country further from our subsample analyses we identify differences between entering developed and developing host countries in terms of the impact of home country government support and quality of host country institutions our findings help explain the puzzle concerning why emerging economy firms have rapidly internationalized in a short period of time and do not follow the pattern predicted by classical ib theories

building capabilities for international operations through networks a study of indian firms in this study we seek to explain how firms from emerging markets build capabilities to operate in international markets through learning from parental networks the building of these capabilities is of particular interest as firms from emerging markets may not necessarily possess the monopolistic advantages commonly referred to in ib literature which allow a firm to succeed in international markets using lagged cross sectional regression models on a sample of 794 indian firms we found that firms draw on the international experience of their parental and foreign networks to build such capabilities findings also indicate that network scope is beneficial for increasing exposure to international markets only in the case of networks that are either small or medium sized additionally we found that firms lacking market power in their home market benefit through foreign partnerships when internationalizing operations

profiling managers to improve export promotion targeting one of the major criticisms of government export promotion schemes in many countries is that they tend to be poorly targeted awareness levels about export schemes among managers of companies at exporting or pre exporting stages of internationalization are often quite low and the perceived usefulness of schemes may decline as companies internationalize and their needs become more specific one solution may be to develop a better understanding of the needs of managers who make export market development decisions and to target segments of managers rather than companies who share similar strengths and weaknesses this study attempts to address these concerns by devising a typology of senior international marketing managers the most senior marketing decisionmakers in a broad multi industry sample of new zealand exporting firms were surveyed the results of the cluster analysis suggest that groups of managers who share similar characteristics can be identified and profiled based on shared international business attitudes and similar levels of knowledge and skills this appears to be a useful method of segmenting international marketing managers to determine what sort of educational and export assistance particular groups may require

sectors and the additionality effects of r d tax credits a cross country microeconometric analysis abstract do the additionality effects of r d tax credits vary across sectors the paper presents a micro econometric analysis of this question for three countries norway italy and france we use a panel of firm level data from three waves of the innovation surveys carried out in these countries for 2004 2006 and 2008 the study estimates input and output additionality effects of r d tax credits in each of these economies and it investigates how these effects differ across sectors characterized by different r d orientation and competition conditions the results point out that firms in industries with high r d orientation have on average higher propensity to apply to r d fiscal incentives schemes and stronger input and output additionality effects output additionality is found to differ among the three examined countries

the influence of the management team s international experience on the internationalization behaviors of smes why are some small and medium sized enterprises smes more successful in selling outside their domestic markets than are other smes in the same industry although the traditional explanation is that firms can gain valuable knowledge and resources as they become older and larger small and young firms are not necessarily disadvantaged if they develop other mechanisms to acquire the requisite knowledge and resources we examine the role of the management team s international experience as such a mechanism for the internationalization of canadian software product firms we show that internationally experienced management teams have a greater propensity to develop foreign strategic partners and to delay less in obtaining foreign sales after start up and that these behaviors are associated with a higher degree of internationalization

limits to international entry mode learning in smes despite extensive research the literature is unclear about the circumstances under which a firm learns from its past foreign entry modes and how this experiential learning is related to future mode choices building on the internationalization process ip model and the idea that some experiential learning is location bound while other learning is non location bound we develop and test theory to explain how experiential learning about foreign operation modes and markets impact future mode choices in new foreign markets overall we argue that mode based experiential learning is limited through the repeated use of a specific operation mode firms develop routines and processes that are non location bound and can be replicated in new foreign markets leading to the use of this same mode type in new locations but when complemented by experiential learning about a target market region firms opt for operation modes with greater commitment in new foreign markets drawing on a sample of german smes and examining four different types of entry modes we find some support however we also identify a number of notable exceptions to our theory in this way we help provide unique new insights informing future ip model experiential learning and international entry mode research

organizational learning about new international markets exploring the internal transfer of local market knowledge this study examines the transfer of local market knowledge within the diversified firm as its divisions expand into a new host country within the u s based corporations in our sample both the nature of local market knowledge itself and differences in organizational structures significantly influence the extent of internal knowledge transfer among divisions the results suggest that as firms expand into new international markets their organizational learning processes differ significantly

adjusting to and learning from institutional diversity toward a capability building perspective this paper identifies two main dimensions institutional diversity and dynamism in the research stream that has substantively engaged with the important contribution of jackson and deeg j int bus stud 39 4 540 561 2008 taking into account their core criticism that institutional analysis in international business research is often de contextualized and building on these two dimensions we present two possible paths for institutional analysis that are sensitive to context the first is a methodological shift towards configurational analyses and specifically the analysis of counterfactual scenarios that could reveal new information about decision alternatives the second is a shift away from a focus on costs and towards the possibility of mnes building capabilities in an exploratory manner when confronted with institutional diversity both approaches build on an understanding of mnes as strategic actors that co evolve with their environments

have coffee producers benefited from the new domestic cherry market evidence using panel data from rwanda the article assesses the effects of the new domestic cherry market on coffee growing households in rwanda using panel data findings from combined first differenced with instrumental variable specification and other estimation methods provide evidence that farmers who sell to the cherry market do not increase their expenditures compared to farmers selling to the traditional parchment market the different time lags in terms of when farmers started selling to the new cherry market may explain the lack of statistically significant differences across the two groups it is possible that farmers will adjust their expenditure patterns in subsequent periods after year over year market trends become more apparent to them

patenting in the shadow of competitors this article empirically examines the patenting behavior of new biotechnology firms that have different litigation costs i show that firms with high litigation costs are less likely to patent in subclasses with many other awards particularly those of firms with low litigation costs this pattern is consistent with the literature on costly litigation which suggests that firms that have high litigation costs will take greater precautions to avoid litigation these results are robust to a variety of control variables and modifications that seek to test alternative explanations

impact of ownership on the international involvement of smes this paper analyses the relationship between the internationalisation strategies of smes and types of ownership different types of ownership affect firms and this in turn will influence the internationalisation strategy adopted using a sample of spanish smes our results show that internationalisation is negatively related to family ownership and positively related to corporate ownership we have also observed that the presence of a corporate blockholder in family firms encourages internationalisation these results support the idea that ownership type influences the decision to internationalise

wholly owned subsidiary versus technology licensing in the worldwide chemical industry this paper empirically analyzes the determinants of the choice between wholly owned subsidiary and technology licensing as a strategy for expansion abroad we use a new and comprehensive database on worldwide plant level investments in the chemical industry during the 1981 1991 period we find that both cultural distance and the presence of other potential licensors favor the use of licensing as a strategy for expanding abroad whereas prior experience favors the choice of wholly owned subsidiary an implication of this study is that competition in the market for technology can foster the international diffusion of technology through the use of arm s length agreements

closing knowledge gaps in foreign markets knowledge and learning are ascribed pivotal roles in firms internationalization processes perceived market uncertainties namely knowledge gaps related to business environments in foreign markets may curb firms inclinations to commit resources to these markets this study explores whether knowledge gaps tend to increase or decrease with time when operating in the foreign market and it discusses which learning components narrow or widen the perceived knowledge gap a theoretical model is developed based on the internationalization process view and the more recent organizational learning perspective including such concepts as overconfidence and absorptive capacity the theoretical model is tested on a set of primary data covering danish and swedish firms and their foreign market operations the results suggest a more subtle relationship between experience and perceived knowledge gaps than the mechanical relationship portrayed by the internationalization process view a relationship in which absorptive capacity and in particular overconfidence play important roles

is public r d a complement or substitute for private r d a review of the econometric evidence is public r d spending complementary and thus additional to private r d spending or does it substitute for and tend to crowd out private r d conflicting answers are given to this question we survey the body of available econometric evidence accumulated over the past 35 years a framework for analysis of the problem is developed to help organize and summarize the findings of econometric studies based on time series and cross section data from various levels of aggregation laboratory firm industry country the findings overall are ambivalent and the existing literature as a whole is subject to the criticism that the nature of the experiment s that the investigators envisage is not adequately specified we conclude by offering suggestions for improving future empirical research on this issue

the impact of export strategy on export sales performance export sales are an important route to growth for the small to medium sized firm this article reports the results of an extensive empirical study of the export strategies of a large sample of high technology electronics firms and the performance results of adopting alternate export strategies six strategy scenarios were identified the results show that the types of foreign markets selected segmentation strategies and product strategies all have a pronounced impact on export sales and export growth the best performers a group of firms called the world marketers and representing 13 5 of the sample achieved a dramatic 188 annual growth in exports and exported 52 5 of their output the profiles of firms that elected each strategy scenario were determined also

effectiveness of r d tax incentives in small and large enterprises in quebec in this paper we evaluate the effectiveness of r d tax incentives in quebec using manufacturing firm data from 1997 to 2003 originating from r d surveys annual surveys of manufactures and administrative data the estimated price elasticity of r d is 0 10 in the short run and 0 14 in the long run with slightly higher elasticities for small firms than for large firms we show that there is a deadweight loss associated with level based r d tax incentives that is particularly acute for large firms for small firms it is not sizeable enough to suppress the r d additionality at least not for quite a number of years after the initial tax change incremental r d tax credits do not suffer from this deadweight loss and are from that perspective preferable to level based tax incentives

internationalization and performance degree duration and scale of operations we assess the theoretical underpinnings and associated empirical findings of the three stage sigmoid curve relationship between degree of internationalization doi and performance by re examining the results reported in one of the prominent studies in the literature we further conduct our own analyses of 23 474 observations of 2 620 us manufacturing firms over the period 1976 2008 and account for self selection of firms into different degrees of internationalization by using a generalized propensity score estimator both sets of results show that the relationship between doi and performance conforms to a mostly negative sigmoid curve and does not support the three stage theorization further examination reveals that two major conceptual and empirical shortcomings underlie the disparity between the theoretical predictions of the three stage model and these empirical findings first whereas theory relies overwhelmingly on enhanced scale of operations as a causal mechanism through which internationalization contributes to performance empirical studies preclude proper identification of scale related benefits second theory and empirics tend to confuse temporary difficulties experienced upon entry into international markets with examining the benefits realizable at different levels of doi regardless of the firm s short term difficulties in realizing those benefits our empirical results show that correcting for each of these shortcomings contributes to diminishing the theory empirics gap

state government promotion of manufacturing exports a gap analysis this study empirically examines the level of the export related expertise of manufacturing firms in a midwestern state of the united states various problems they face in export business and types of government assistance desired by their stage of export involvement it also investigates the appropriateness of government export assistance and the gap between governmental export promotion efforts and private sector needs it is shown that the identification of expertise problems and government assistance needs by export stage can help government agencies develop a systematic approach to export promotion

explaining the internationalization of ibusiness firms information and communication technologies have given rise to a new type of firm the ibusiness firm these firms offer a platform that allows users to interact with each other and generate value through user co creation of content because of this ibusiness firms face different challenges when they internationalize compared with traditional firms even those online in this article we extend existing internationalization theory to encompass this new type of organization we theorize that because ibusiness firms produce value through the creation and coordination of a network of users these firms tend to suffer greater liabilities of outsidership when expanding abroad and therefore concentrate on network and diffusion based user adoption processes as they internationalize based on a multi case investigation of a sample of ibusiness firms we develop new theory and testable hypotheses thus we make an important contribution by expanding internationalization theory to a new set of firms

market knowledge diversification and export expansion the research focuses on the export expansion process of small and middle sized manufacturing firms and some of its correlates diversification and geographical market distribution means of acquiring information and modes of international distribution the study reveals the overwhelming influence on export expansion of information acquired from business transactions as opposed to reliance on private or public information services the impact of market diversification and its nature is confirmed policy implications are suggested

the effect of specificity of experience on a firm s perceived importance of institutional knowledge in an ongoing business we study how three types of firm experience ranging from the specific to the general influence the perceived importance of institutional knowledge in the ongoing business of internationalising firms based on a sample of 101 small to medium sized firms the three types of firm experiences are international country and ongoing business the results show that firm experience within the ongoing business and the experience from multiple past business deals in various countries develop institutional knowledge whereas experience from multiple past business deals in a specific country does not the theoretical contribution of this paper is that it establishes a link between different kinds of experience and managerial cognition in terms of institutional knowledge in addition it emphasises that firms develop institutional knowledge from multiple diverse country experiences and experience in the specific ongoing business rather than experiences at the level of the country

born global or born regional evidence from an exploratory study in the costa rican software industry this paper provides empirical evidence about born global firms in the software industry of a small developing country with an open economy costa rica the paper is based on data collected through interviews with ceos or founders of 40 costa rican software companies findings show that there are few born global firms among costa rican software providers we find that most companies followed a gradual approach to internationalization and they did not export immediately upon birth a careful analysis of firms that exported soon after they were born reveals that most firms are actually born regional

the export development process an integrative review of empirical models despite widespread research on the export behavior of firms no integrative review of the empirical work in relation to export development models exists in the extant literature this article reviews the main models on the subject identifies their structural characteristics evaluates the methodologies used for their validation and analyzes the key conceptual issues emerging from their assessment while valuable inroads into the mechanics and constituent parts of the export development process have been made this avenue of empirical inquiry has attracted criticism on structural methodological and conceptual grounds future research in the field should harness the eclectic contribution afforded by existing theory and at the same time enhance its status with contributions from marketing business and other disciplines

mimetic and experiential effects in international marketing alliance formations of us pharmaceuticals firms an event history analysis alliances are recognized as an indispensable tool for managers operating in a global business environment and as a fundamental stage of the internationalization process of the firm drawing on a co evolutionary framework this article investigates the mimetic and experiential effects in international alliance formation we focus on a critical unresolved issue in the literature what is the role of mimetic behavior and previous alliance experience in mitigating the uncertainty associated with engaging in cross border operations an event history analysis of 792 international marketing alliance formations initiated by 317 firms in the us pharmaceutical industry is employed to test the hypotheses the findings of two different hazard rate models reveal significant complex effects of density and cross border alliance experience on the propensity to engage in new international marketing alliances

customer involvement and service firm internationalization performance an integrative framework to overcome the costs of doing business abroad researchers have suggested either legitimacy or efficiency based solutions however both types of solutions still treat host country customers as external to the theory we highlight the role of customers in the international professional business service setting and argue that customer involvement is positively related to the perceived internationalization performance of multinational corporations mncs mncs with managers who perceive higher legitimacy pressures and greater needs for local knowledge tend to undertake greater efforts to build customer involvement furthermore we develop a configuration framework between perceived strategic needs and mncs capabilities specifically mncs that match relational capability with legitimacy needs and absorptive capacity with knowledge needs are more likely to engage in customer involvement our survey of 175 chinese mncs provides evidence that customer involvement is positively related to perceived internationalization performance when mncs relational capabilities are stronger the positive relationship between legitimacy pressure and customer involvement increases by contrast mncs with greater perceived market ambiguity improve customer involvement only when they have stronger absorptive capacity we conclude that mncs may simultaneously reduce legitimacy and efficiency costs through customer involvement after considering the fit between perceived environmental pressures and firm capabilities

what does the show case show evidence of and lessons from adjustment in uganda abstract uganda is often seen as an african show case for the beneficial effects of structural adjustment high growth rates have been combined with a high degree of ownership of the reforms at the same time critics have pointed to continued aid dependence and limited growth of the important agricultural export sector the contribution of this paper to this debate is three fold first ownership has not always been exemplary and is still fragile in some respects second although aid has indeed been important for bringing about high growth aid dependence has diminished over time third there have been real supply responses from the agricultural export sector

evaluating export promotion programmes uk overseas trade missions and export performance this paper examines the extent to which firms knowledge and structural characteristics as well as firms behaviour in foreign markets following trade mission participation impacts upon trade mission success and export performance the findings suggest that 1 a diversification strategy in terms of export markets benefits future expansion into new foreign markets 2 specific knowledge about the targeted markets should be acquired prior to participating in the trade missions 3 communication with potential business partners should be established prior to participating in the trade missions and 4 the business relationships established before and during the trade missions should be cultivated through regular contacts using not only communication technology but also regular visits in summary overseas trade missions contribute to the generation of incremental sales in foreign markets by enhancing the relationship building process between business partners

do managers behave the way theory suggests a choice theoretic examination of foreign direct investment location decision making many empirical examinations of foreign direct investment location choice have relied on the use of secondary data and surveys on the choices made by firms about the form and location of overseas investment these studies have two inherent and related problems first they rely solely on the location choices made by different firms and assume that the domains of possible options considered were the same second there is an assumption about the rules used by firms to make these decisions yet the decisions are made by boundedly rational managers after reviewing the literature this study examines managers choices about foreign investment location through the use of structured experimentation the results show that in creating sets of investments to consider managers appear to follow fairly rational rules however the choice of actual investments appears less aligned to traditional models

experiential knowledge and costs in the internationalization process using a behavioral approach this study identifies and delineates components of experiential knowledge in the internationalization process three hypotheses are developed and tested they center around the lack of knowledge in the areas of foreign business foreign institutions and firm internationalization as well as the effect that this lack of knowledge has on managers perceived cost in the internationalization process with the help of a lisrel based structural model the three hypotheses are tested on a sample of 362 service firms the analysis shows that lack of internationalization knowledge has a strong impact on the lack of both business and institutionalization but there is no direct effect of lack of internationalization knowledge on perceived cost of internationalization

experience imitation and the sequence of foreign entry wholly owned and joint venture manufacturing by south korean firms and business groups in china 1987 1995 the evolution of foreign entry in the form of joint ventures and wholly owned manufacturing operations is examined as a staged process shaped by experience and imitation dynamics at the firm group and industry levels of analysis the expansion of south korean firms into china between 1987 and 1995 lends support to the staged view of foreign entry over time technology intensive firms are more likely to abandon joint venture entry modes owing to contractual hazards firms in the same business group are found to imitate each other s choice of joint ventures and wholly owned plants firms in the same industry mimic each other s choice of wholly owned plants though not of joint ventures

creative tension the significance of ben oviatt s and patricia mcdougall s article toward a theory of international new ventures the article by oviatt and mcdougall threw the spotlight on international entrepreneurs on international new ventures and on their importance in the globalising world economy recognising the rich theoretical implications of this phenomenon they mounted a challenge to received internationalisation process theories and established a new and exciting research theme that of international entrepreneurship this article reviews the impact of their contribution and discusses new research themes raised by their challenge to the process theories of internationalisation

foreign direct investment and local linkages this paper analyses the pattern of local linkages in foreign direct investment fdi treating such local linkages as an investment in local relationships using taiwanese manufacturing firms investing abroad as the sample for our case study we find that the local linkage intensity of a foreign subsidiary differs by fdi location entry mode firm size and the nature of the production network in which an investor is embedded more local linkages will be pursued by an investor if it is in search of distinctive and inimitable resources as opposed to homogeneous and reproducible resources investment in local linkages always begins with the linkage that carries the lowest risk to the original business network for manufacturing firms the sequence of such linkages is workers components and parts subcontracting and finally sources of r d

can multinational enterprises light up developing countries evidences from the access to electricity in sub saharan africa summary this paper examines the role that multinational enterprises mnes and foreign direct investments fdi can have in enhancing the access to electricity for local communities in developing countries based on the quality of home and host institutions access to electricity is a marker for development but it is far from being universal in developing countries the shortage of electricity is mainly the consequence of inability of governments in planning financing and developing necessary electricity infrastructure in this context investments from other actors can be essential particularly we focus on the role of fdi and mnes we claim that when mnes invest in developing countries they are incentivized to solve the lack of electricity infrastructure mainly for two reasons to guarantee their business activities and to gain legitimacy with their local stakeholders in addition we argue that mnes and fdi from institutionally underdeveloped countries will be more prone to develop infrastructure for the provision of electricity to local population as generally they suffer from a negative stereotype for this study we rely on 1 547 observations composed of pairs of 83 home countries and 15 host countries in sub saharan africa observed from 2005 to 2011 due to the nature of the database we adopt panel data techniques i e system gmm and corrected least square dummy variable estimators we find that fdi promotes access to electricity in developing countries with weak institutions and this is more likely true when fdi come from institutionally underdeveloped countries these results are far from obvious as they controvert common idea among institutional scholars that a regulatory authority is essential in the provision of infrastructure in conclusion with this paper we partially rehabilitate the image of mnes investing in developing countries by demonstrating that under certain conditions they could contribute to energy poverty alleviation of local population

prior conditions and early international commitment the mediating role of domestic mindset our study investigates why some firms engage in low international commitments such as exports in the early phases of internationalization whereas others leapfrog the internationalization process and start with high international commitments in the form of foreign direct investment fdi process models of internationalization propose that firms start with low commitment activities and gradually increase their commitments to international markets however recent empirical evidence has shown that many firms make high international commitments from the start our findings suggest that domestic resources and competitive action propensity affect early international commitments indirectly through domestic mindsets a domestic mindset refers to the knowledge structures of the top management team prior to starting international activities based on their managerial experience and learning in domestic markets our results suggest that knowledge and learning gained in domestic markets through diverse resource and competitive activities may be crucial in early international commitments

the relationship between firm size and export behavior revisited many academic studies and government leaders are asking small and medium sized firms to become more involved in exports unfortunately the role that can be played by smaller firms is unclear despite the vast number of studies on size and export behavior discrepancies in study findings and the absence of variance statistics prevent researchers from understanding the importance of size this study has sought to examine the direct and indirect effects of firm size by examining three dimensions of export behavior propensity of export countries exporting to and export attitudes for 14 072 canadian manufacturers the results indicate that while firm size is positively related to all dimensions of export behavior its importance is limited as the amount of variance explained is modest

r d support programs in developing countries the turkish experience in this study the determinants of private r d investment are examined at the level of firms in the turkish manufacturing industry we focus our attention on the effect of public r d support programs our findings indicate that public r d support significantly and positively affects private r d investment there seems to be even an acceleration effect on firm financed r d expenditures smaller r d performers benefit more from r d support and perform more r d in addition technology transfer from abroad and domestic r d activity show up as complementary processes given the scarcity of studies on r d support in technologically weaker economies our hope is that the less developed countries can exploit these findings in constructing socially beneficial technology policies

the internationalization of small and medium sized firms this paper contributes to the existing research by integrating the notions of organizational learning and entrepreneurial orientation into the body of international entrepreneurship our primary framework combines learning theory and the new venture theory of internationalization to study the extent to which small and medium sized companies engage in international activities we found that the firms international learning effort and entrepreneurial orientation are positively associated with internationalization intent whereas domestic learning effort is negatively related with internationalization intent overall our results suggest 1 that intensive knowledge renewal and exploitation regarding foreign markets and the internationalization process itself may increase internationalization by affecting the perceptions of opportunities offered by further international expansion and 2 that firms with an entrepreneurial mindset may be more likely to develop a long term substantial presence in the international arena compared to firms that are more reactive or conservative

innovation in israel 1968 1997 a comparative analysis using patent data abstract the israeli high tech sector is widely regarded as a hotbed of cutting edge technologies and as the growth engine of the israeli economy in the 1990s and beyond in this paper we present a close up portrait of innovation in israel for the past 30 years with the aid of highly detailed patent data we use for that purpose all israeli patents taken in the us over 7000 as well as us patents and patents from other countries for comparative purposes the time path of israeli patenting reveals big jumps in the mid 1980s and then again in the early 1990s reflecting underlying shocks in policy and in the availability of relevant inputs israeli ranks high in terms of patents per capita compared to the g7 the asian tigers and a group of countries with similar gdp per capita finland is strikingly similar taiwan s patenting has grown extremely fast and is now on par with israel south korea is rapidly closing the gap the technological composition of israeli innovations reflects quite well worldwide technological trends except that computers and communications the fastest growing field in the us has grown even faster in israel the weak side resides in the composition of israeli assignees the actual owners of the intellectual property rights just 35 of israeli patents were assigned to israeli corporations a much lower percentage than in most other countries relatively large shares went to foreign assignees to universities and the government and to private inventors on the other hand israeli patents are of good quality in terms of citations received and getting better over time us patents command on average more citations but not in computers and communications or in biotechnology and israeli patents are significantly better than those of the reference group of countries

entrepreneurial proclivity capability upgrading and performance advantage of newness among international new ventures in spite of a notable interest surrounding the learning advantages of newness lan centered on the emergent international entrepreneurship literature we have only limited understanding of how young international new ventures invs acquire learning advantages and avoid the liabilities of newness and foreignness in order to achieve lan related performance from early internationalization in this article two related but conceptually distinct capability upgrading constructs knowledge capability upgrading and network capability upgrading are identified to serve as mediating mechanisms that link entrepreneurial proclivity and lan related performance our findings from a sample of 436 young invs from china provide supporting evidence for the mediating effect of capability upgrading particularly among relatively larger new ventures and those operating with cost price advantages in the international marketplace this study fills a gap in the under researched area of literature surrounding invs from emerging economies and demonstrates how young international venturing firms can leverage the entrepreneurial dynamics of learning to achieve growth opportunities from early internationalization

learning from age difference interorganizational learning and survival in japanese foreign subsidiaries this paper extends research on experiential learning of foreign subsidiaries by exploring the temporal conditions under which a foreign subsidiary can benefit from the experience of its sister subsidiaries building upon organizational evolution and learning literature we propose that differences in entry timing among sister subsidiaries provide structural conditions that bound the opportunities for inter subsidiary learning we argue that different entry cohorts of sister subsidiaries are beneficial to a focal subsidiary as they provide non redundant complementary experience from their different operational stages and ignite the motivation to learn our empirical analysis of japanese foreign subsidiaries provides strong evidence that survival is enhanced by the experience of different entry cohorts of sister subsidiaries but not by that of similar cohorts qualitative evidence also shows that multiple channels of experience exchange across sister subsidiaries lead to actual learning we further show that the survival benefit derived from different cohorts is contingent on the level of environmental change as well as on the level of experience of the focal subsidiary and its parent firm our research highlights the importance of temporal heterogeneity in the internationalization process and offers implications for the temporal strategy of multinational companies

internationalising in small incremental or larger steps we argue that companies may enter foreign environments either incrementally as suggested by long established theory or by taking larger steps that may result in lower initial performance but through learning and experience lead to increased performance in future expansions this idea is corroborated by the experience of dutch companies entering into central and eastern europe we also find that expansion steps may be too large thereby limiting the exploration of foreign environments our study suggests that sequential internationalisation strategies do still matter and that companies have to balance exploitation and exploration in internationalisation

an evaluation of the swedish system of active labour market programmes in the 1990s we investigate the presence of short and long term effects from joining a swedish labor market program vis a vis more intense job search in open unemployment overall the impact of the program system is found to have been mixed joining a program has increased employment rates among participants a result robust to a misclassification problem in the data on the other hand it has also allowed participants to remain significantly longer on unemployment benefits and more generally in the unemployment system this being particularly the case for those entitled individuals entering a program around the time of their unemployment benefits exhaustion

speed of the internationalization process the role of diversity and depth in experiential learning by analyzing internationalization as a dynamic process we attempt to explain the speed of international operations in terms of learning acquired in the course of past international activities we consider that the speed of the internationalization process depends on the type of experiential learning that results from decisions implicit in the internationalization process choice of location and modes of operation firms develop two types of learning activities with respect to the selection of foreign markets and modes of operation diversity and depth of accumulated international activities we propose that depth of international activities has an inverted u shaped impact on the speed of the internationalization process while diversity of international activities has a u shaped influence on the speed of internationalization process the results of our longitudinal study of 889 firms over 23 years 1986 2008 suggest that diversity of international activities promotes long term learning by exposing the firm to richer experiences although such learning only takes place over time depth of international activities may accelerate the internationalization process in the short term but it eventually restrains its potential for development in the long term our research highlights the short term vs long term consequences of different types of decisions related to the internationalization process

the patent paradox revisited an empirical study of patenting in the u s semiconductor industry 1979 1995 we examine the patenting behavior of firms in an industry characterized by rapid technological change and cumulative innovation recent survey evidence suggests that semiconductor firms do not rely heavily on patents to appropriate returns to r d yet the propensity of semiconductor firms to patent has risen dramatically since the mid1980s we explore this apparent paradox by conducting interviews with industry representatives and analyzing the patenting behavior of 95 u s semiconductor firms during 1979 1995 the results suggest that the 1980s strengthening of u s patent rights spawned patent portfolio races among capital intensive firms but it also facilitated entry by specialized design firms

do the effects of r d tax credits vary across industries a meta regression analysis this paper presents a survey of the micro econometric literature on the effects of r d tax credits on firms innovation activities we focus on one specific aspect that has not received sufficient attention in previous research the sectoral dimension our meta regression analysis mra sets up a new database collecting a large number of firm level studies on the effects of r d tax credits and investigates the factors that may explain differences in the estimated effects that are reported in the literature the main result of the mra analysis is indeed that sectors matter specifically the additionality effect of r d tax credits is on average stronger for smes firms in the service sectors and firms in low tech sectors in countries with an incremental scheme the paper proposes a simple framework to investigate why the innovation and economic effects of r d tax credits vary across sectors and points out new directions and hypotheses for future research

innovation and size at the firm level empirical studies examining the relationship between firm size and innovative activity have produced what superficially might appear to be contradictory results while some studies have found a positive relationship between firm size and technological change still others have identified no relationship or even a negative one there are two main reasons for these seemingly inconsistent findings the first is that different measures have been used to quantify technical change these measures have typically involved either some measure of inputs into the innovative process such as r d expenditures or else the number of patented inventions while neither of these are direct measures of innovative output they clearly represent different aspects of the innovative process thus it is perhaps not too surprising that different results have tended to emerge when the r d input measures are used than for the patent measures the second reason is that virtually every study examining the relationship between firm size and technical change has had to use a truncated distribution of firm sizes where either no or only a few small firms were included for example scherer s 14 234 35 conclusion that the empirical results tilt on the side of supporting the schumpeterian hypothesis that size is conducive to vigorous conduct of r d was based on the responses of 443 large corporations participating in the federal trade commission s line of business survey similarly scherer 15 used the fortune annual survey of the 500 largest u s industrial corporations and found that the number of patented inventions increases less than proportionately along with firm size soete 16 found that r d expenditures tend to increase more than proportionately along with firm size using a sample from business week consisting of the most r d intensive firms bound et al 6 were able to include a considerably wider spectrum of firm sizes in their sample of 1 492 firms from the 1976 compustat data they found that r d increases more than proportionately along with firm size for the smaller firms in their sample but that a fairly linear relationship exists for the largest firms inferences about the relationship between firm size and technical change based on a severely we thank f m scherer and an anonymous referee for helpful suggestions as well as sigrid raasch and jianping

r d tax incentives in eu countries does the impact vary with firm size this paper studies the effect of r d tax incentives on the research activity of manufacturing firms based in france italy spain and the uk over the period 2007 2009 using a matching procedure we show that in all the examined countries but spain r d tax incentives induced a statistically significant increase in the intensity of r d expenses over sales however this effect is driven only by the behaviour of small firms by assessing the benefit cost ratio of r d tax policies we find evidence of substantial additional effects in italy and the uk

tax incentives and r d activity firm level evidence from taiwan this paper investigates the effect of tax incentives on r d activities in taiwanese manufacturing firms specifically we assess the potential r d enhancing effect on recipients of r d tax credits compared with their non recipient counterparts moreover the potential difference in the r d enhancing effect between high tech and non high tech firms is also examined utilizing a firm level panel dataset during 2001 and 2005 empirical results obtained by propensity score matching show that recipients of r d tax credits appear on average to have 93 53 higher r d expenditures and a 14 47 higher growth rate for r d expenditures than non recipients with similar characteristics the r d enhancing effect of r d tax credits is not found to be particularly relevant to high tech or non high tech firms we further employ a generalized method of moment gmm of the panel fixed model to control for the endogeneity of r d tax credits and firm heterogeneity in determining r d expenditure various estimates based on the entire sample and high tech firms are quite similar and there is a significantly r d enhancing effect of r d tax credits this result suggests that the r d preferential policy has induced more r d expenditure by firms in taiwan while the existence of the r d enhancing effect brought on by tax incentives is intuitive the estimates can provide insightful implications for the r d tax policy

variables associated with export profitability this study is an analysis of variables associated with the profitability of exporting such information is useful both for export management and for government agencies that wish to promote business commitment to exporting the methodology utilizes a multiple regression analysis of data in questionnaire responses from 168 wisconsin manufacturing firms in 1979 it provides a means for evaluating difficult to measure export marketing considerations such as export marketing channels export methods and foreign dealer support from the supply side of the demand supply equation which can be conceptualized as export marketing analysis from the supply side