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"...

The paper aims at providing the conceptual building blocks of a theory of the firm which addresses its "ontological questions" (existence,boundaries and organization) by placing production at its core. We draw on engineering for a more accurate description of the production process itself,...

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...

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...

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...

Several recent studies investigate the relation between geographic concentration of production and vertical integration, based on the hypothesis that spatial agglomeration of firms in the same industry facilitates input procurement thereby reducing the degree of vertical integration. The present...

This paper uses a large sample of Italian manufacturing firms over the period 2004-2006, to investigate whether different types of agglomeration externalities affect firms’ internationalisation modes. In addition to specialisation economies, Jacobs externalities are analysed following the...

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...

In this paper we explore the relation between vertical disintegration and the co-localization of knowledge intensive business service (Kibs) in the metropolitan region of Milan, using micro-geographic data and nonparametric methods. Our main results are that: (i) compared to other manufacturing...