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"...

This Policy Brief presents recent results on the impact that an open innovation mode has on European firms' environmental innovations. New evidence drawn from the CIS suggests that knowledge sourcing can increase the environmental innovation performance of firms. However, the way firms search...

Relying on a rich firm-level dataset, we investigate the factors underlying the demand for foreign languages (FL) by Italian manufacturing firms. As main determinants, we focus on innovation and internationalization activities, these latter ranging from export to FDI. In the empirical analysis,...

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...

This paper investigates empirically whether inward greenfield foreign direct investment (FDI) is related to greater sectorial innovation in the host Italian provinces. We combine several sources of data to estimate panel count models, regressing the annual number of patents in each province and...