Follow the cloud! The impact of ICT on Italian provinces’ trade

Marinella Boccia, Anna Ferragina and Stefano Iandolo
Additional contact information
Marinella Boccia: University of Salerno

Economia e Politica Industriale: Journal of Industrial and Business Economics, 2022, vol. 49, issue 4, No 1, 667-690

Abstract: Abstract This study investigates the role of digital capacities in the internationalisation processes of Italian provinces using a panel dataset built upon the territorial statistical database of ISTAT (Italian National Institute of Statistics) for the period 2014–2017. The purpose is to explore the link between three internationalisation indicators (export value, export intensity and export in most dynamics sectors) and two ICT drivers (use of e-business digital technologies, such as cloud computing, and use of social media) expected to enable firms to share information along the supply chain and to ease firms’ communication and fixed cost investment. To purge the analysis from unobserved determinants of export performance and ICT adoption reverse causation problems, the identification relies on an instrumental variables approach that addresses the endogeneity of our two variables of interest related to ICT. The results show a significant relationship between the ICT capacities related to cloud adoption and our export indicators confirming the role of e-business digital technologies in explaining the export performance of Italian provinces. The use of social media also appears weakly able to impact on the export performances indicators. These results are robust to our endogeneity checks.

Keywords: Information and Communication Technology; Internationalization; Social Media; Cloud Computing Technologies; Export (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: F14 L60 O33 R10 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (5)

Downloads: (external link)
http://link.springer.com/10.1007/s40812-022-00230-4 Abstract (text/html)
Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.

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:spr:epolin:v:49:y:2022:i:4:d:10.1007_s40812-022-00230-4

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

DOI: 10.1007/s40812-022-00230-4

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 ().