Fernando Merino

University of Murcia | UM

It is well established in the literature that a firm’s innovation can promote its exports through demand-pull and/or regulatory channels. However, there is a lack of knowledge on whether green innovation strategies affect a firm’s international expansion. In this study, we depart from the existing literature by considering the introduction of envir...

This paper examines how some key features of an entrepreneur lead Early-Stage Firms (ESF) to become Born Global (BG). Specifically, it focuses on human capital, the scope and novelty of the product and the opportunities of the business environment in the early stages of a firm. It contributes to the literature by focusing on some characteristics of...

Purpose The main purpose of this study is to analyze how factors such as innovation, entrepreneurial spirit and motivation, as well as various economic and environmental factors, affect the creation of born-global (BG) companies. Design/methodology/approach The research model was tested through logistic regression techniques to a sample obtained f...

The aim of this paper is to study the policies developed by local authorities in Spain to provide a safe environment on beaches in order to identify the strategies behind as well as the measures applied to enforce them. Our results, based on a survey of over 200 municipalities responsible for the 646 beaches awarded an ecolabel certification, the B...

Beach tourism in an important industry in many countries, and in the Mediterranean it supposes an extra pressure on the seawater quality. Concern about this aspect led the European Union to issue a first directive on the quality of bathing water in 1976 and modify it in 2006. This regulation establishes a mandatory control, in all European Union (E...

Backshoring as a way of undoing the offshoring strategy has become quite common in many industries and countries. This paper analyses the reasons that may justify this strategy based on International Economics and Transaction Cost Economics. Specifically, we point that the framework to analyse offshoring can be valid, but that the knowledge, experi...

RATIONALE AND OBJECTIVES: Social innovation was traditionally in reference to activities within the third sector and social entrepreneurship. However, this concept has been extended to apply to many other dimensions of socioeconomic activity, one of which is the public sector. The proposal of this paper is twofold: i) to provide an analytical frame...

After decades of off-shoring strategies, companies are often critically re-evaluating their earlier location decisions; in doing so, sometimes they implement the so-called relocation of second degree. Among them, back-shoring (i.e., relocation to the home country) and near-shoring (relocation to the home region) are two of the alternatives attracti...

Research Summary This paper examines the effect of key cultural and economic factors on the emergence of born‐global (BG) companies. Such factors include the intentions and the growth aspirations of the entrepreneur, as well as the country's characteristics in terms of its income per capita and the complexity of its economic system. The analysis al...

Resumen El objetivo de este trabajo es el análisis de la eficiencia y la productividad total de los factores del sector del automóvil en España en el periodo 1994-2018. Se emplea un análisis compuesto por dos fases. En la primera, se ha utiliza un análisis de la eficiencia in-dividualizada para cada una de las siete principales empresas por medio d...

After decades of manufacturing offshoring strategies, generally addressed to low cost countries, in the last few years companies have been increasingly revising their location strategies. In so doing, they often implement either back-shoring (relocation to the home country) or near-shoring (relocation to the home region) alternatives. While the for...

The aim of this paper is to analyse to what extent the recognition of sustainable management of coastal resources may act as a driver of local economic growth. To this end, the importance of Blue Flag certification in promoting the development of a local tourism sector is analysed. Using a natural experiment based on some localities increasing the...

(Paper in Spanish) The aim of this paper is to analyze efficiency and Total Factor Produtivity in the Spanish car-maker industry along 1994-2018. The analysis has two stages: In the first one, an individualized analysis or each of the seven largest firm is developed using a non-parmetric Data Envelopmen Analysis. In the second one, the produtivity...

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to illustrate how the introduction of new technologies can lead to reconsidering the division of the production process as well as the location of each stage, which may mean reshoring some of them. Design/methodology/approach: The research is based on the analysis of the consequences of new technologies deve...

The article “Macroeconomic determinants of corporate failures. Evidence from Romania and Spain” by Ion Anghel, Calcedonia Enache, Fernando Merino published in Journal of Business Economics and Management, 21(3), 743–759, https://doi.org/10.3846/jbem.2020.12217, contained the following errors: Some information in the 5th graph about Jmax was not giv...

The purpose of this study is to investigate the reaction of the insolvency rate to the various shocks in the economies of Romania and Spain through a Structural Vector Autoregressive model. Departing from quarterly data for 2008–2016, it was found that the future values of the insolvency rate are explained by the past values of the interest rate an...

Depopulation of large parts of the territory is an important phenomenon in a many parts of Europe. Given its impact, public policies are demanded to increase the appeal of those locations in order to change that trend. In this paper we analyze what kind of policies are more successful to fight depopulation, whether those ones run by municipalities...

Este trabajo analiza los procesos de retorno al país de origen de algunas de las fases del proceso productivo que previamente se habían deslocalizado a países extranjeros en el sector del calzado. La metodología empleada consiste en un estudio de casos a empresas del sector. Los resultados del estudio revelan que la estrategia de relocalización res...

The participation of women in entrepreneurship is an important component of development therefore concerns for their wellbeing in a growing global concern. Yet most of the evidence, reasons, deterrents how to manage entrepreneurship has been focused in urban areas of develop and developing countries. In this chapter, we analyse characteristics of w...

1. Introduction and motivation In Spain, as in many other countries, population is changing across the territory leading to new situations where population is concentrated in some areas, mostly large cities, while some smaller villages are being depopulated. The consequences are important, both from a purely geographical/demographical perspective (...

El objetivo del presente trabajo es analizar si la crisis económica ha hecho que las empresas reduzcan su actividad innovadora y si es así, si este efecto ha sido especialmente intenso entre las empresas de menor dimensión. Mediante la estimación de diferentes modelos probit, los resultados indican un empeoramiento de los principales indicadores in...

This paper analyzes the processes of reshoring (returning to the country of origin of some of the phases of the productive process that in the past had been relocated to foreign countries) in the footwear sector. The methodology used is a case study with qualitative information from companies in the sector The results of the study reveal that the r...

Globalisation has altered the appeal of each region to host economic activities. As firms are pushed to be more competitive, they develop outsourcing and relocation strategies, displacing some production activities to new emplacements. These changes have important impacts in some regions and are modifying the economic geography of Europe. This pape...

This study aims to examine the dynamic relationship between foreign direct investments (FDI) and economic growth, using the Structural Vector Autoregressive model, in the period 2007-2014. The results of the econometric model show that the trajectory of FDI has its own origins, with reduced influences from economic growth. Another important conclus...

This paper analyses the impact of sourcing abroad on exporting in the case of Spanish manufacturing firms that are family-owned. Sourcing abroad can be a channel that places the firm in a better position to export, not only because it increases the productivity of the firm, but also because it provides information, new managerial procedures or just...

Este libro contiene un programa de política industrial que persigue incre-mentar el peso de las manufacturas en el PIB español y su capacidad de ge-nerar empleo, en consonancia con los objetivos de la agenda de la Comisión Europea para el año 2020. El libro resume una extensa investigación finan-ciada por el Consejo Económico Social, a través de un...

The aim of this paper is to study the strength of Spanish high technology industries. It analyses its recent evolution in comparison with the main European economies as well as their competitiveness in international markets. The main conclusions show that participation in global value chains is an additional factor to obtain both product and proces...

This chapter analyzes the main features of the labour intensive sectors of Spanish manufacturing industry. (full text in Spanish)

This paper studies the relationships between family involvement and internationalization of family SMEs, examining the effects exerted by the three main dimensions that comprise the concept of familiness: power, experience, and culture. Disentangling the influence of familiness dimensions lead us to discover the combined effects of family’s governa...

En este trabajo se analiza las consecuencias que la distribución por tamaños de las empresas tiene en el tejido productivo español. Tras plantear los factores que suponen una especificidad en el caso de las empresas pequeñas y medianas de cara a su crecimiento y supervivencia en un entorno de crisis, se evalúan las consecuencias que, en términos de...

The aim of this paper is to analyze the effect of the crisis on the innovative activity of Spanish companies according to their size and sector. In particular we test whether the economic crisis has made companies reduce their innovative activity and if so whether this effect was particularly strong among smaller companies. The results indicate tha...

La finalidad de este cuaderno de investigación de la Cátedra Fundación ICO sobre la financiación de la PYME en España es doble. De un lado, justificar la pretensión del Observatorio de la Fundación ICO, examinando la razón de ser y experiencia de otros observatorios reconocidos, nacionales o internacionales, tales la SBA, de Estados Unidos, o el Ob...

The purpose of this working paper published by the ICO Foundation Chair on the financing of SMEs in Spain is twofold. On the one hand, it seeks to justify the claim of the Observatory of the ICO Foundation, examining the rationale and experience of other recognized national or international observatories such SBA, US, or the Observatory for SMEs, E...

Este primer cuaderno de investigación de la Cátedra Fundación ICO sobre la financiación de la PYME en España recoge, a modo de estado de la cuestión, las características principales de las pequeñas y medianas empresas en España, dentro de un contexto europeo e internacional. El trabajo pone el foco en las diferencias entre los países centrales de l...

Esta comunicación tiene como objetivo aportar nueva evidencia empírica a las motivaciones de la ayuda española a América Latina durante el periodo 1988-2012. La hipótesis que se intenta demostrar es que ha habido un cambio en el patrón distributivo de la ayuda el cual estaba basado en las motivaciones comerciales explicado por la internacionalizaci...

This paper analyses the ownership structure of foreign affiliates of Spanish firms. In contrast to previous studies on the participation degree, the paper highlights the importance of the previous decision to invest abroad. To do so, an econometric model with a limited dependent variable helps to show that to ignore the previous decision modifies t...

Knowledge-intensive services (KIS) are important activities for regional growth and considered to be located at the top of urban and regional hierarchies. However, the widespread use of information and communication technologies (ICT) may lead to a higher degree of decentralization. This paper presents a detailed analysis of the geographical distri...

From a theoretical perspective it is well stated that firms involved in international markets should exhibit higher productivity levels. There is also empirical evidence that supports this result. This paper extends this relationship to a dynamic perspective. It provides evidence on how productivity evolves in more internationalized firms distingui...

The aims of this paper are: On the one hand, we analyze the presence of strategic groups in four sectors (machinery and equipment, chemicals, metal products and textiles) in 14 countries in Latin America and the Caribbean. On the other hand, estimate the efficiency of companies and their countries of origin (country-effect) with best practices (bes...

This paper studies the determinants of the export activity of family SMEs, disentangling the three main dimensions that comprise the concept of familiness: power, experience, and culture. The results, using the F-PEC scale over a sample of 500 Spanish SMEs, show that this approach identifies the determinants that explain the export activity of fami...

The literature of service outsourcing is mainly focused on case studies or specific service activities. However, there is no evidence about the pattern of relatedness among outsourcing of services. This paper analyses this issue by a relatedness index previously applied in the framework of product and technological diversification. The index is app...

This paper analyses outsourcing and the change in production locations from a joint perspective, given that both of them are considered as a de-composition of the value-chain. The first one supposes to divide the production process among a larger set of autonomous firms. The second ones, supposes to divide it among a larger set of emplacements. Alt...

Outsourcing of services is one of the most important phenomena that are reshaping firms’ boundaries in the last decades. This article assesses the reasons leading manufacturing firms to contract out some service activities instead of providing them internally. The theoretical framework, inspired in transaction cost economics, emphasizes the effects...

Business services are mainly concentrated in major urban economic areas, and affect the way in which supply and demand interact at urban level. Firstly, this article explains the corresponding impact for location and use, given a set of possible explanatory factors. Secondly, we test hypotheses within the Madrid region: a specific econometric model...

The literature on firm's internationalization establishes a direct relationship between productivity and foreign activities. This paper extends the usual tests on this relationship in two areas: first, it distinguishes the main stages in the internationalization process (multinationals and exporters); second, as tests of difference of means may be...

This work is twofold. On the one hand, we analyze the presence of strategic groups in four sectors (machinery and equipment, chemicals, metal products and textiles) in 14 countries in Latin America and the Caribbean. On the other hand, estimate the efficiency of companies and their countries of origin (country-effect) with best practices (best-prac...

Dada la importancia que tienen las empresas de capital extranjero en España, la posibilidad de que se produzcan fenómenos de desinversión de las mismas en busca de localizaciones con mayores ventajas supone un seria riesgo para el tejido productivo español. Este trabajo tiene como objetivo mostrar qué extensión han tenido estas procesos, más alIá d...

This paper investigates the decision to export with a proprietary exports channel by Spanish manufacturing firms. The research focuses on the effects of organizational capabilities versus scale economies on the vertical integration decision, and postulates a system of two simultaneous equations to properly evaluate the influence of a proprietary ex...

En este trabajo se analiza la importancia que han tenido los principales instrumentos de las políticas de apoyo a la financiación de las empresas. Para ello se parte de un estudio detallado de la situación financiera de las empresas, mostrando los rasgos característicos que tienen las PYME en los años finales de la década de los noventa. La existen...

A finales de la década de los noventa España se ha convertido en un importante emisor de inversión directa en el exterior. Como consecuencia de ello, una gran parte de los estudios sobre las relaciones internacionales de nuestro país se ha dirigido a analizar este fenómeno. Por este motivo, resulta cada vez más necesaria la disponibilidad de inform...

ABSTRACT The growth in the outsourcing of services has become one of the most relevant features of the changes in manufacturing firms’ behaviour. This paper provides empirical evidence about the extent and evolution of services outsourcing by Spanish manufacturing firms in 1990-1998. A general increase in outsourcing of services has been detected a...

Research on the internationalisation of business firms has investigated the decision to export and the volume of sales abroad, separately from the decision about the exporting mode. This paper presents a unified theoretical framework to integrate the two decisions, which departs from imperfect competition, sunk costs and transaction costs. The mode...

Different models have stressed the importance of the costs of price-adjustment given that its existence justifies the possibility of some real effects caused by changes in nominal variables. This paper is focused on the evaluation of these costs from a microeconomic perspective. Using a database of Spanish manufacturing firms, the relationship betw...

Este trabajo es el resultado de un estudio sobre la actividad exportadora del sector industrial de la Comunidad Valenciana para el período 1991-1995, a partir del comportamiento individual de las empresas. En la medida que se está analizando el comportamiento de los agentes individuales se podrán alcanzar conclusiones más precisas que los estudios...

EIn this paper, we analyze the existence of firm owned export channels as a response to the firm's specificities. The different theories justifying the internalization of such channels have showen, as well, that the larger the amount of exports the more likely the firm will establish its own export channels. As the existence of such channels can pr...

The empirical analyses of firm diversification decisions, both for new activities (new products) and markets (for example, new routes for airlines), have usually estimated a binary dependent variable model for each of the decisions the firm makes. To obtain consistent estimators, every relevant effect must be considered in the specification. As thi...

This paper analyzes the efficiency levels of Spanish manufacuturers that can be categorized as family firms in comparison to non-family firms. The study of the differences takes into account the characteristics of their markets, the technology, the rproduction processes as well as other firm specific factors such as diversificacion, age, marketing...

En este trabajo, se analiza la internacionalización del sector industrial español a partir de la actividad comercial en el exterior de las empresas manufactureras. Para ello, se estudia la influencia del tamaño en su actividad exportadora, y en qué medida las distintasestrategias de diferenciación (tanto vertical como horizontal) están asociadas...

Este trabajo analiza la importancia de las empresas de capital extranjero en la manufactura española desde dos perspectivas distintas. Primero, en términos de comparación entre recursos, estrategias y resultados de las empresas extranjeras y las empresas de capital español. Segundo, en términos de posibles efectos indirectos, en forma de spill-over...

The aim of this paper is the analysis of the equity structure of foreign affiliates. The focus is on the characteristics of the parent-firm, at the extent that Transaction Costs Theory, and OLI paradigm establishes that they are the main explanatory factors. The analysis extends the existing literature on two lines. First, it considers the previous...

This paper analyses outsourcing and the change in production locations from a joint perspective, given that both of them are considered as a decomposition of the value-chain. The first one supposes to divide the production process among a larger set of autonomous firms. The second ones, supposes to divide it among a larger set of emplacements. Alth...

Documento de Trabajo nº 3 / 2002 (1) Servilab y Universidad de Alcalá. Dpto. de Estadística, Estructura Económica y Organización Económica Internacional. (2) Servilab La serie Documentos de Trabajo que edita el Laboratorio de Investigación del Sector Servicios (SERVILAB), incluye avances y resultados de los trabajos de investigación realizados como...

The authors acknowledge the comments received the 2 nd Conference of the European Trade Study Group (ETSG) in Glasgow. The first author acknowledges financial support from the Spanish Ministry of Education (CICYT SEC97-1368) and Comunidad de Madrid (06/0067/98).