On the 11th of April at Queen Mary University of London I gave a keynote speech at the Conference on Local Context and Challenges of Innovation in China.
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.
On 29th January I gave a key note speech at the 3rd Geography of Innovation Conference in Toulouse.
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.
The article on The impact of outward FDI on the performance of Chinese Firms co-authored with Claudio Cozza and Marco Sanfilippo has been featured in The Economist, September 12th 2015.
The phenomenon of Emerging Economy Multinational Enterprises (EMNEs) and their internationalization process have sparked the debate over the appropriateness of International Business theories to study EMNEs’ internationalization processes. The literature has extensively investigated what distinguishes EMNEs from Advanced Country Multinational Enterprises (AMNEs). This review summarizes and discusses some of the issues that have mostly attracted scholarly debate in this research area.
This paper looks at the location choices of MNEs in the European Union (EU-25) regions and unveils that EMNEs follow distinctive location strategies. Their attraction into large regional markets is similar to AMNEs as well as their irresponsiveness to efficiency seeking motives. Conversely, the most knowledge-intensive investments respond mainly to strategic assets and the agglomeration of foreign investments in the same business functions.
I participated in panel on The Challenge of Responding to the Increased Globalization of Economic Activities and Mobility of Talent at Circle 10th Anniversary Seminar.
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A paper by Rabellotti, together with Giuliani, Gorgoni and Guenther, was reviewed in the Rising Powers Blog.
It empirically investigates how subsidiaries of multinationals from both emerging (EMNEs) and advanced (AMNEs) economies investing in Europe learn from the local context and contribute to it as much as they benefit from it. To explore this we classify the behavior of MNE subsidiaries into different typologies on the basis of how knowledge is transferred within the multinational and on the nature of the local innovative connections. The empirical analysis relies on an entirely new, subsidiary-level dataset in the industrial machinery sector in Italy and Germany. Results show that EMNEs and AMNEs undertake different strategies for tapping into local knowledge and for transferring it within the company. We identify a new typology of EMNE subsidiary that contributes through its significant local innovative efforts to development processes in the host country. This result suggests possible win-win situations from which novel policy implications may be drawn.
The article has been reviewed in the Rising Powers Blog.
With Alessia Amighini and Claudio Cozza I wrote an article on emerging multinationals investing in Europe. Tito Boeri wrote about this article in Internazionale.