In this paper, we study the behavior of innovation and imitation among a group of firms in a competitive industry. To survive, firms have two fundamental choices. They can choose to be innovative firms that develop cost-reducing technology by their own efforts. Alternatively, they can also...

This paper contributes to the literature explaining firm-level heterogenenity in the extensive margin of trade, defined as the number of products exported by each firm. We develop a dynamic model where firms must invest in RD to maintain and increase their portfolio of goods: the process of...

This paper draws on the multi-dimensional characterization of absorptive capacity (AC) to empirically investigate the antecedents and the effects of its "potential" dimension (PAC): i.e., the firm's capacity of acquiring and assimilating external knowledge, as distinguished from its "realized"...

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 local externalities. This model, which is an "enlarged" version of Crepon, Duguet and...

Recent developments in the new international trade theory stressed the relationship between firm heterogeneity and internationalization performance. The key prediction of these models is that firms with different levels of productivity - the main source of firm heterogeneity - will generally...

The paper investigates empirically the impact that outsourcing strategies have on the labour productivity of firms embedded in a local production system characterized by idiosyncratic techno-economic and organizational features. A diachronic cross-section econometric model of the productivity...