offshoring undertaken in the new members of EU in the period 1998-2006. Recent empirical evidence (Danninger, Joutz 2007 IMF) shows that dominant factors explaining the increase in German market shares are trade relationships with fast growing countries and regionalized production in the export...

We test the impact of import penetration on the productivity of a sample of roughly 35,000 Italian manufacturing firms operating in the period 1996-2003, considering the impact on productivity of both import penetration in the same industry and import penetration in the up-stream industries. We...

offered significant incentives in order to attract foreign direct investments (FDI), being motivated to do so by expectations of possible spillover benefits. Using an unbalanced panel of firm level data in Bulgaria, Poland and Romania over the 1995-2003 period, we examine the impact of foreign...

In this paper we analyse whether and to what extent MNEs can generate positive externalities for the host economies by allowing for spatial dependence patterns in TFP growth rates at sectoral and regional level. In order to achieve this research objective we use spatial econometric techniques,...

According to the modern theory of social capital (see Coleman (1990), Putnam (1993), Fukuyama (1995)), widespread trust would influence the economic performances of a country through a) reduction of transactional costs (monitoring and preventive activities to protect themselves from being...

This paper inspects how comparative advantages have changed in the last 30 years. Using trade data on 197 countries over the period 1976- 2004, it provides evidence that comparative advantages are not static, but change over time. More interestingly, it shows the rise in relevance of...