Using a large sample of Italian manufacturing firms, in this paper we estimate a structural model of research, innovation, productivity and export performance augmented to take account for the role played by spatial agglomeration externalities. This model, which is an ‘augmented’ version of...

Aim of this paper is to explore the main drivers of outsourcing of knowledge intensive business services by Italian manufacturing firms. While anecdotal and empirical evidence has emphasized labour cost and scale economies as behind firms' choices to outsource production or service activities,...

A recent strand of the economic literature has emphasised the role of services, and in particular knowledge-intensive business services (KIBS), as a primary source of knowledge creation and diffusion. Since this transferring process often occurs through strong face-to-face interactions, the role...