The cross border R&D activity of italian business firms

Claudio Cozza and Antonello Zanfei

ECONOMIA E POLITICA INDUSTRIALE, 2014, vol. 2014/3, issue 3, 39-64

Abstract: Using data from the Istat Business R&D (RS1) Survey we explore inward and outward R&D activities of different categories of firms resident in Italy in 2001-2010. From this perspective we provide detailed evidence of the role played by this country in the global creation and transmission of technology. First, foreign owned multinationals are the most active in cross-border R&D but holding a low and decreasing share. This trend confirms that the Italian economy is a poorer and poorer attractor of high value added investments from abroad, while national companies have significantly increased their R&D efforts over the past decade. Second, although outward expenditures of Italian companies increased substantially, R&D performed abroad remains a minor component of business research activities, and is due to a small number of firms investing in a few destination countries. We argue that this paucity of outward R&D activity might hinder both "asset exploiting" and "asset seeking" strategies of Italian firms. Third, we find a strong positive correlation between outward R&D and other innovative activities, including domestic research and R&D commissioned to foreign affiliates.

Keywords: Internazionalizzazione della R&S; IDE in entrata; IDE in uscita (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: F10 F23 O33 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2014
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (11)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.francoangeli.it/riviste/Scheda_Rivista. ... 943&Tipo=ArticoloPDF (text/html)
Single articles can be downloaded buying download credits, for info: https://www.francoangeli.it/DownloadCredit

Related works:
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:fan:polipo:v:html10.3280/poli2014-003003

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.francoang ... io.aspx?IDRivista=13

Access Statistics for this article

ECONOMIA E POLITICA INDUSTRIALE is currently edited by FrancoAngeli

More articles in ECONOMIA E POLITICA INDUSTRIALE from FrancoAngeli Editore
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Stefania Rosato ().