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...