With Rasmus Lema and Carlo Pietrobelli I have contributed to the Handbook on Global Value Chains with a chapter presenting a new conceptual framework for investigating how GVCs and ISs jointly contribute to innovation in developing countries. It can be downloaded here.
This paper, co-authored with Vito Amendolagine, Andrea Presbitero and Marco Sanfilippo and published in World Development, investigates whether and how participation and positioning in the global value chains (GVCs) of host countries is associated to local sourcing by foreign investors in 19 Sub-Saharan African countries and Vietnam. The article is open source and can be downloaded here.
Chinese and Indian multinationals are continuously expanding their operations in Europe and the USA through cross-border acquisitions (CBAs), with the aim of tapping into international knowledge located in target firms and innovative hubs. In this article published in the Journal of Economic Geography with Amendolagine, Giuliani and Martinelli, we look into the innovative impacts that CBAs have on the acquiring multinational enterprises.
Here you can download the paper
In this article co-authored with Rasmus Lema and Padmashree Sampath, we investigate how combining global value chain and innovation system approaches can help to foster an understanding of the possible trajectories that learning and innovation may take in developing countries.
Free download here
With Valentina De Marchi and Elisa Giuliani I published an article in the European Journal of Development Research. The paper offers s a systematic review of the literature on developing country GVCs to investigate the learning channels used by local firms, both within (firm level, collective level) and outside of these value chains (i.e. external sources of learning), and the extent to which this activity promotes innovation.
Here there is a free to view link to the article
In this article co-authored with Andrea Morrison, we investigate the different catch-up cycles in the global wine sector between 1960 and 2010. Changes in demand opened the first window of opportunity for latecomers, who gradually caught up via path-creating strategies. Incumbents maintained their leadership by aligning their wines to current demand patterns. The entry of China in the wine market can open up a new catch-up cycle.
Here you can download the paper
We empirically analyse the host country determinants of Chinese outward foreign direct investments (FDI) for the years 2003 to 2011, using disaggregated data by country and industry. Our aim is to assess the relevance of market seeking, resource seeking and strategic asset-seeking motivations as suggested by the theory on host country determinants of FDI.
The Innovation Systems (IS) literature tends not to emphasize the crucial impact of international knowledge and innovation exchange and collaboration through, for example, inter-firm and intra-firm networks and Global Value Chains (GVC). In developing countries this aspect is crucial, with integration in GVC playing a growing and very important role in accessing knowledge and enhancing learning and innovation.
A chapter co-authored with Andrea Presbitero on firm access to bank credit in Latin America was published in Firm Innovation and Productivity in Latin America and the Caribbean: The Engine of Economic Development edited by Matteo Grazzi and Carlo Pietrobelli. The paper is also published in Economic Notes.
The complete book can be downloaded here and our chapter is here
This paper explores the location strategies of multinational enterprises (MNEs) from emerging countries (EMNEs) in search for regional strategic assets.The empirical results suggest that EMNEs are attracted by the availability of technological competences only when their subsidiaries pursue more sophisticated and technology-intensive activities.
We study Chinese and Indian multinationals investing in Europe investigating their identity, their characteristics and the association between their features and their international strategies. In relation to the mode of entry, we find that greenfield investments are a more likely option for large-sized companies. Moreover a high propensity for innovation is associated with a high probability to enter with an acquisition and with technological asset-seeking investments.
Growing internationalization constitutes an opportunity for technological catch up. In this paper we analyze Brazilian, Indian, and Chinese cross-border inventions with EU-27 inventors. Our results suggest that these inventions represent an opportunity for emerging country firms to accumulate technological capabilities, access frontier knowledge, and appropriate the property rights of co-inventions.