In times of increasing oil prices and a weak dollar, European companies that focus their business on the US market may find themselves in a weak position. While many businesses can hedge this kind of risk by relocating production to the US, or employing financial remedies, these strategies may...

The information and communications revolution has hastened the process of globalization in today's world of business. Consequently, businesses, even small and mid-sized companies, are confronted with cultural diversity when these companies become internationally active. Yet only few businesses...

This paper analyzes the simultaneous relationship between R&D and foreign sales in Swedish multinational enterprises in the manufacturing sector. We argue that this two-way relationship should especially apply to multinationals based in small open economies due to the firms' high dependence on...

Over the last two decades, Southeast and East Asian developing countries have evolved into an economic growth pole of increasingly global importance. The pronounced trade orientation of the eight major countries - i.e. the ASEAN countries, Hong Kong, the Republic of Korea and Taiwan - has...

Im BASF-Konzern sind in den letzten Jahren erhebliche Veränderungen feststellbar, die einerseits auf Absatz- und Konkurrenzfaktoren zurückzuführen sind und andererseits die Umsetzung einer bestimmten Strategie erkennen lassen. Als internationale und nationale Einflußfaktoren zeigen sich...

Recent literature on multinational firms has stressed the importance of low productivity as a barrier to the cross-border expansion of firms. But firms may also need external finance to shoulder the costs of entering foreign markets. We develop a model of multinational firms facing real and...

Recent literature on multinational firms has stressed the importance of low productivity as a barrier to the cross-border expansion of firms. But firms may also need external finance to shoulder the costs of entering foreign markets. We develop a model of multinational firms facing real and...

The following essay deals with this kind of conflict as a possible consequence of the piggybacking strategy, presenting a theoretical part (chapter 2) followed by an empirical analysis (chapter 3). The latter is based on an opinion poll among German firms that have been asked to evaluate the...

We describe a simple model in which domestic firms decide whether to serve a foreign market through exports or horizontal foreign direct investment (FDI). This choice involves a trade-off between the higher variable trade costs associated with exports and the higher fixed set-up costs associated...