Innovation activities and learning processes in the crisis. Evidence from Italian export in manufacturing and services

Raffaele Brancati (), Emanuela Marrocu, M. Romagnoli and Stefano Usai

Working Paper CRENoS from Centre for North South Economic Research, University of Cagliari and Sassari, Sardinia

Abstract: Are there any factors driving firms' internationalization process other than productivity? By means of a firm-level dataset on manufacturing and production services sectors collected by MET, this paper investigates the export performance of enterprises in Italy in the aftermath of the recent economic crisis. Our results suggest that productivity is not the only (and most important) determinant in this matter. Innovation activity and learning processes are indeed pivotal in boosting enterprises to sell their products abroad and, to a certain extent, in backing their success on foreign markets. In particular, by estimating dynamic probability models as well as Tobit II-Heckman and two-part models, we provide evidence that firm's ability to learn from its past export experiences lowers international trade informal barriers, while its ability to learn thanks to regional and local industry spillovers is important in terms of both extensive and intensive performances on foreign markets.

Keywords: international trade; inter-regional trade; innovation; regional/industrial spillovers; dynamic binary models; Tobit II models; two-part models (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C23 C25 F14 O3 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2015
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cse, nep-ino, nep-int and nep-sbm
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://crenos.unica.it/crenos/node/6549
https://crenos.unica.it/crenos/sites/default/files/WP15-16.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: Innovation activities and learning processes in the crisis: evidence from Italian export in manufacturing and services (2018)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:cns:cnscwp:201516

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Working Paper CRENoS from Centre for North South Economic Research, University of Cagliari and Sassari, Sardinia Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by CRENoS ().