Daniela Maggioni

Offshoring to High and Low Income Countries and the Labor Demand. Evidence from Italian Firms

Making use of an original data set we investigate the effects of imports of intermediates from high and low income countries on the conditional labour demand of a panel of Italian manufacturing firms. We estimate a dynamic panel data model by means of System GMM allowing for the endogeneity of our right hand side regressors, especially our offshoring measures. Our results bear a negative offshoring effect which is attributable exclusively to imports of intermediates from low income trading partners and mainly concerns firms operating in Traditional sectors. No statistically significant effect is estimated for imports from high income countries. These findings are robust to the different measures of offshoring and to the inclusion of further controls.

Exporters in Services: New Evidence From Italian Firms

This paper provides new evidence on the determinants of the export performance of firms in services based on a cross-section of Italian firms in the NACE Sections G, I and K for the year 2003. The empirical analysis of the determinants of the export status and intensity shows that the success of service firms in foreign markets is specifically related to their experience in the national market, their belonging to national and international networks and to their relationship with large industrial firms. A higher level of productivity and a higher skill intensity only seem to matter when exporting to more distant industrial countries.

Imports, exports and the firm product scope: evidence from Turkey

Making use of an original firm-product level dataset for Turkish manufacturing, we dissect the role of importing, exporting and the joint involvement in both activities on the firm product scope and new product introduction. Within the bulk of overall exports, we identify and focus on foreign sales of own produced goods. From the comparison between a single and a multiple treatment approach, it emerges that the simultaneous entry in the import and export markets delivers the highest innovation rate. Even if we disclose the existence of important complementarities between the two trade activities, starting to export appears as the real driver of firm product innovation. On the contrary and differently from previous evidence, when moving to a multi-treatment setting, the impact of importing fades away.

Dissecting the impact of innovation on exporting in Turkey

Does innovating promote firms’ export probability? By separately modelling – theoretically as well as empirically – the impact of process and product innovation, we show that the joint adoption of both innovation strategies fosters Turkish firms’ first time export entry in rich destination markets. Nevertheless, innovation strengthens firms’ export probability. As predicted by our theoretical sketch, product innovation matters in particular for exporting to developing economies, while process innovation reinforces the role of product innovation for exporting to richer markets.

Are Firms Exporting to China and India Different from Other Exporters

This chapter asks if and why advanced countries differ in their ability to export to China and India. To this end we exploit a newly collected, comparable cross-country dataset (EFIGE) obtained from a survey of 15,000 manufacturing firms in Austria, France, Germany, Hungary, Italy, Spain and the United Kingdom. The EFIGE dataset contains detailed information on firms international activities as well as firm characteristics such as size and productivity, governance and management structure, workforce, innovation and research activity. We study both the extensive and intensive margins of exports and identify firm characteristics that are positively or negatively correlated with exporting activity tout court and with exporting to China and India conditional on being an exporter. We confirm previous rich evidence and show that larger, more productive, and more innovative firms are more likely to become exporters and export more. We also provide some new evidence on the role of governance and management: while there does not seem to be a strong negative effect of family ownership, we find that a higher percentage of family management reduces a firms export propensity and export volumes. When we turn to exports to China and India, we find that firms exporting there must be on average larger, more productive, and more innovative than firms exporting elsewhere.

New and Improved: Does FDI Boost Production Complexity in Host Countries?

This paper examines the relationship between the presence of foreign affiliates and product upgrading by Turkish manufacturing firms. The analysis suggests that Turkish firms in sectors and regions more likely to supply foreign affiliates tend to introduce more complex products, where complexity is captured using a measure developed by Hausmann and Hidalgo (2009). This finding is robust to controlling for omitted variables, sample selection and potential simultaneity bias. It is also in line with the view that inflows of foreign direct investment stimulate upgrading of indigenous production capabilities in host countries.

On tariff changes and firm-production evolution: insights from Turkish manufacturing

We contribute to the yet limited evidence on the relationship between trade liberalisation and a firms product mix and diversification strategies for an emerging economy, Turkey. Lower import barriers foster firms’ specialisation in their core products. A drop in import tariffs, indeed, enhances a firms propensity to drop fringe varieties and favours production growth of core products. More importantly, it favours firms’ specialisation in more sophisticated goods. Export tariff cuts, instead, by relaxing competitive pressure at home and lowering the cost to export, only reduce the firms’ incentive to innovate.