We develop an endogenous growth model with R&D spillovers to study the long run consequences of offshoring with firm heterogeneity and incomplete contracts. In so doing, we model offshoring as the geographical fragmentation of a firm’s production chain between a home upstream division and a...

In this paper we provide empirical evidence on the effect of ICT investment on the propensity to offshore for a large sample of Italian manufacturing firms. Contrary to previous literature focussing on the service sector, after taking into account the endogeneity of ICT investment in the...

Recent empirical studies have reported strong firm-level evidence of `learning by exporting\' in product innovation. In this paper we consider a specific channel which might contribute to explain the innovation premium of exporters, by focussing on the information exchange between firms...

A short review of the theoretical and empirical evidence indicates that Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) has the potential to increase the intensity of competition as well as to act as a channel for technology transfers. One would expect, all else equal, an increase in average productivity...

A production-theory approach to migration is adopted in this paper to address the role of migrant workers from extra-EU countries in Italian manufacturing production at the firm-level. The use of exible functional forms to model firm-level technology lets us directly derive different measures of...

There exists a growing body of literature which looks at export decisions made by firms. Most studies focus on developed countries and do not explore whether different behavioral patterns prevail over the firm size distribution. This paper aims at filling this gap in the literature by analyzing...

The principal aim of this paper is to demonstrate that transaction cost analysis could be useful integrate in a more advanced perspective of dynamic capabilities. We think to answer to an old classic coasian’s problem of existence of the firm as an entity separated by market and moreover to...

This paper analyses the relationship between firm productivity and export behavior in German manufacturing firms. We examine whether productivity increases the probability of exporting, and assert that there is a causal relationship from high productivity to entering foreign markets, as...

Multi-sector versions of the international trade model of Eaton and Kortum (2002) usually re- strict trade elasticities to be identical across sectors, with potentially distorting effects on the estimates of the model parameters. This paper allows for heterogeneous sectoral trade elasticities...

This paper studies how cross-country differences in labor market institutions shape the pattern of international trade, focusing on workers’ skill acquisition. I develop a model in which workers un-dertake non-contractible activities to acquire firm-specific skills on the job. In the model,...