On the R&D giants’ shoulders: do FDI help to stand on them?

Sandro Montresor () and Antonio Vezzani

Economia e Politica Industriale: Journal of Industrial and Business Economics, 2015, vol. 42, issue 1, 33-60

Abstract: We investigate the impact of outward Foreign Direct Investments (FDI) on the Multinational Corporations technological leadership, meant as the capacity of entering and remaining among the top Research & Development (R&D) world investors. The research hypotheses are formulated by distinguishing FDI in R&D from FDI in other economic activities. The findings support our hypotheses with respect to the top R&D circles of the European Industrial Research and Innovation Scoreboard. Increasing the number of FDI projects in R&D makes the entrance in these circles more probable. The same holds true for non-R&D FDI, but with a lower impact. The number of R&D–FDI also reduces the probability of exiting from the circles, while that of non-R&D ones does not. These results are robust when the value of FDI projects in R&D is considered, apart from their impact on the exit from the circles, which appears to vanish. Although with caveats, the policy support to R&D internationalization provides companies with a sustainable competitive advantage in the race for the most substantial R&D investments and for the entailed economic and financial benefits. Copyright The Author(s) 2015

Keywords: Foreign Direct Investments (FDI); Multinational Corporations (MNCs); Research & Development (R&D); O32; F23; O33 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2015
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (6)

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1007/s40812-014-0002-1 (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
Working Paper: On the R&D giants' shoulders: Do FDI help to stand on them? (2014)
Working Paper: On the R&D giants' shoulders: Do FDI help to stand on them? (2014)
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:spr:epolin:v:42:y:2015:i:1:p:33-60

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.springer.com/economics/journal/40812

DOI: 10.1007/s40812-014-0002-1

Access Statistics for this article

Economia e Politica Industriale: Journal of Industrial and Business Economics is currently edited by C. Cambini, M.G. Colombo, L. Piscitello, L. Rondi and A. Zanfei

More articles in Economia e Politica Industriale: Journal of Industrial and Business Economics from Springer, Associazione Amici di Economia e Politica Industriale
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().