Roberta Rabellotti

• http://robertarabellotti.it
• Professor (Full) at University of Pavia

The GVC approach has stressed that inter-firm linkages within GVCs can play a crucial role in transferring technological knowledge and promoting innovation. However, the exact nature of these GVC inter-firms relationships, and their impact on the learning and innovative processes of firms involved in such GVCs in developing countries is still contr...

Using new firm-level data from the Emerging Multinationals' Events and Networks DATAbase (EMENDATA), this paper investigates the effects on Chinese firms of Outward FDI (OFDI) into advanced European countries. Propensity score matching is combined with a difference-in-difference (DiD) estimator to reduce the problem of self-selection of treated fir...

The phenomenon of Emerging Economy Multinational Enterprises (EMNEs) and their internationalization process have sparked the debate over the appropriateness of International Business theories to study EMNEs’ internationalization processes. The literature has extensively investigated what distinguishes EMNEs from Advanced Country Multinational Enter...

The empirical literature on China's outward foreign direct investment mainly relies on aggregate data from official statistics, but the reliability of such data is currently a matter of concern because it does not take account of relevant features such as industry breakdown, ownership structure and entry mode. A novel firm-level database, EMENDATA,...

This paper presents a critical review of the Global Value Chain literature in light of the “Technological Capabilities” approach to innovation in LDCs. Participation in GVC is beneficial for firms in LDCs, which are bound to source technology internationally. However, the issues of learning and technological efforts at the firm-level remain largely...

We explore the extent to which Chinese lending to African countries promotes participation in Global Value Chains (GVC). Using loan-level data on Chinese and World Bank lending to 37 African countries between 2000 and 2018 we find that in contrast to World Bank lending, Chinese lending is associated positively with an increased GVC participation. T...

This paper investigates how institutional conditions at national and regional levels shape the decisions of Multinational Enterprises (MNEs) to invest abroad by means of either acquisitions or greenfield investments. The empirical analysis covers all foreign direct investment (FDI) projects in the European Union by the largest MNEs in the world to...

This book concerns itself with the key puzzle of the postwar political economy of Latin America: why has the pursuit of development and catch-up with the advanced economies proved so elusive? Specifically, the volume seeks to explore the key factors comprising Latin America’s middle technology and income trap and what steps which might be taken to...

“Global Value Chain Development Report” is a collaborative research outcome produced by four organizations (*) that lead research on Global Value Chains (GVCs). The fourth issue of the report focuses on the aspect of resilient and sustainable GVCs in turbulent times. It provides a clear explanation and a thorough up-to-date overview of some of the...

Since the last decade, with the aim of improving their technological and innovative capability Emerging Market Multinationals (EMNEs) have increasingly undertaken strategic asset-seeking investments in developed countries. For this purpose, one of the main channels to acquire knowledge through foreign direct investments (FDIs) is the access to spec...

This paper is based on a review of the literature that brings together GVCs, green and digital transformations. Or to be more precise, the analysis is based on three main components: (a) the greening of GVCs and environmental upgrading; (b) the digital transformation of manufacturing GVCs and (c) an initial exploration of the green and digital join...

The green transformation has profound implications for the global economy and, hence, for the prospects for latecomer development. In this paper we review the insights derived from case studies of developing countries’ green technology experience. We conduct a systematic literature review covering seven key technologies. This allows us to examine w...

Technological change has transformed the ways knowledge is developed and shared internationally. Accordingly, in the quarter-century since the WTO was established, and since its Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights came into force, both the knowledge dimension of trade and the functioning of the IP system have been rad...

The Oxford Handbook of China Innovation provides a contemporary and authoritative view of the role of innovation in China’s extraordinary emergence. The Handbook consists of chapters written by over sixty experts from universities and research institutions worldwide, who describe and analyze this phenomenon with criticism, discussion of policy issu...

We investigate the impact of Outward Foreign Direct Investment (OFDI) on the innovation performance of Indian multinationals by analysing their choice of entry mode (cross-border acquisitions versus greenfield investments) and their international location decisions (i.e. choice to locate in a global city). We rely on an augmented fractional logit e...

Innovation trajectories in global value chains (GVCs) can take differentiated pathways. In this article, we address the question: do stylized trajectories emerge from the analysis of countries’ relative innovative capacity (IC) and GVC participation? We draw explorative insights from a cluster analysis of 45 countries on the two subsectors of the i...

In this article, we take stock of the nature and scope of global value chain (GVC)-oriented policies. Building on the papers that have been accepted to the special collection, we categorize GVC-oriented policies according to four different policy objectives: participation, value capture, inclusiveness, and resiliency. We compare and contrast the so...

There is mounting agreement that the global economy is at the nascent stage of a green transformation. In response, multinational enterprises (MNEs) are seeking to enhance their capabilities for sustainable innovation and many have begun to globalise their green efforts. But to what extent and how (if at all) do green foreign direct investments (FD...

The world is in the early stages of a paradigm transition toward a global green economy. In this article, we propose the notion of green windows of opportunity, highlighting the importance of institutional changes in the creation of new opportunities for latecomer development. We emphasize how demand and mission-guided technical change influence th...

R&D related foreign direct investments represent a powerful mechanism for cross-border knowledge sharing that can stimulate the process of technological catch-up. However, low-income countries and smaller middle-income countries remain largely excluded from this kind of global flows of knowledge. In this chapter, we discuss the motivations and impl...

Do emerging-market multinational enterprises (EMNEs) innovate after they have acquired advanced countries’ innovative firms and have invested in regions with high innovative capacity? Do EMNEs’ absorptive capacity and status positively moderate the relationship between their post-deal innovative output and the innovative capacity of the target firm...

The local sourcing of intermediate products is one the main channels for foreign direct investment (FDI) spillovers. This paper investigates whether and how participation and positioning in the global value chains (GVCs) of host countries is associated to local sourcing by foreign investors. Matching two firm level data sets on 19 Sub-Saharan Afric...

This article investigates how combining global value chain and innovation system approaches can help to foster an understanding of the possible trajectories that learning and innovation may take in developing countries. Based on the wealth of empirical evidence collected in the special issue, we introduce the notion of the co-evolution of global va...

The local sourcing of intermediate products is one the main channels for foreign direct investment (FDI) spillovers. This paper investigates whether and how participation and positioning in the global value chains (GVCs) of host countries is associated to local sourcing by foreign investors. Matching two firm-level data sets of 19 Sub-Saharan Afric...

The role of emerging economies in the global economy via embeddedness in Global Value Chains (GVCs) is increasing, but their ability to become innovation leaders is less certain. The GVC approach stresses that the inter-firm linkages afforded by being part of a chain are crucial for transferring knowledge. However, their impact on the innovation pe...

The second half of the 1980s saw the advent of the concept of milieu innovateur, thanks to a group of scholars known as the Groupe de recherche européen sur les milieux innovateurs (GREMI) with a particular interest in the active role of space in the innovation process (Aydalot 1986). Roberto Camagni was one of the leading scholars in GREMI.

Since 2013, China is the third largest foreign investor in the world and Europe is a major destination for Chinese investing firms, especially the largest European economies where the great majority of their investments are concentrated. In this chapter, we provide a comprehensive map of Chinese Foreign Direct Investments (FDI) in Europe, taking in...

This monograph explores productivity, innovation, and firm performance, important issues that affect private sector development in the Caribbean region. Using unique and recently available datasets consisting of more than 4,000 surveys at the firm level, and covering 13 Caribbean countries, it examines a set of variables that affect productivity an...

The wine industry is an extremely interesting sector from a catch -up point of view because the latecomers in the international market have changed how wine is produced, sold and consumed and, in doing so, they have challenged the positions of incumbents. Until the end of the 1980s, the European countries, and particularly France and Italy, dominat...

Due to deregulation and financial liberalization, Latin American countries have recently undertaken bank restructuring and consolidation processes. This paper investigates firm access to credit in the region, focusing on the role of the credit market structure. Through an empirical investigation based on the World Bank Enterprise Survey, we find th...

This paper explores the location strategies of Multinational Enterprises (MNEs) from emerging countries (EMNEs) in search for regional strategic assets. The analysis is based on a systematic comparison between EMNEs and multinationals from advanced countries (AMNEs) in order to unveil similarities and differences between these two major sources of...

Firms from emerging countries are going global, and Europe is attracting around one-third of their direct outward investments. Growing internationalization constitutes an opportunity for technological catch up. In this paper we analyze Brazilian, Indian, and Chinese cross-border inventions with European Union (EU-27) inventors, during the period 19...

An intense process of deregulation and financial liberalization in Latin America has increased competitive pressures and led to bank restructuring and consolidation. This chapter looks at firm access to credit in the region, focusing on the role of credit market structure. Using firm-level data from the World Bank Enterprise Survey, we find that ac...

This paper contributes to the literature on Chinese and Indian multinationals investing in Europe through an empirical investigation about their identity, their characteristics and the association between their features and their international strategies. The investigation exploits a database, named EMENDATA (Emerging Multinationals’ Events and Net...

The article is aimed at understanding the dynamics and consequences of technology-driven foreign direct investments, undertaken predominantly with the aim of accessing and learning to master technologies by Emerging Market Multinational Enterprises (EMNEs) in Europe, with a particular focus on India and China. The results are grounded on a database...

International collaboration among researchers is a far from linear and straightforward process. Scientometric studies provide a good way of understanding why and how international research collaboration occurs and what are its costs and benefits. Our study investigates patterns of international scientific collaboration in a specific field: wine rel...

This paper contributes to the current debate in both Economic Geography and International Business on the nature and strategies of Multinational Enterprises MNEs from emerging countries EMNEs. The paper fills a very relevant gap in the existing literature by shedding new light on the location strategies of EMNEs at the national and regional level,...

The phenomenon of Emerging Economy Multinational Enterprises (EMNEs) and their internationalization process have sparked the debate over the appropriateness of International Business theories to study EMNEs’ internationalization processes. The literature has extensively investigated what distinguishes EMNEs from Advanced Country Multinational Enter...

The literature on gender-based discrimination in credit markets is recently expanding, but the results are not yet definitive and have not been generally agreed upon. This paper exploits a new dataset on Barbados, Jamaica, and Trinidad and Tobago, which provides detailed information about female ownership and management in firms for investigating t...

This paper empirically investigates how subsidiaries of multinationals from both emerging (EMNEs) and advanced (AMNEs) economies investing in Europe learn from the local context and contribute to it as much as they benefit from it. To explore this we classify the behavior of MNE subsidiaries into different typologies on the basis of how knowledge i...

This paper investigates the geography of multinational corporations’ investments in the EU regions. The ‘traditional’ sources of location advantages (i.e. agglomeration economies, market access and labour market conditions) are considered together with innovation and socio-institutional drivers of investments, captured by means of regional ‘social...

Recent years have seen an intense and critical debate about the impact of microcredit on entrepreneurial activities and poor households' welfare. This paper suggests that infor-mation asymmetries in the ex-post loan arrangement between the microfinance institution (MFI) and local borrowers could partially explain the limited impact of microcredit....

We empirically analyze the host-country determinants of Chinese outward direct investments (ODI) in the period from 2003 to 2008, using disaggregated data by country and sector and distinguishing between state-owned or controlled enterprises (SOEs) and privately-owned firms. Our results show that the pattern of Chinese ODI differs according to corp...

In this paper, we study how globalization impacts on the structure and governance patterns of value chains and on the resilience of local clusters. We study the value chains related to two Basque (Spain) companies in the wind energy industry, Iberdrola and Gamesa, and the local cluster to which they belong. We find that firms within the cluster hav...

This is a pre-print version of a paper that has been submitted for publication to a journal.

Recent studies have stressed the role played by global pipelines in fostering cluster growth and innovativeness. This paper develops a formal model investigating when global pipelines contribute to increase local knowledge, depending on various cluster characteristics such as size, knowledge endowment and ease of internal knowledge transmission. Th...

This study investigates the motivations driving Chinese outward direct investment to Italy. The analysis is based on secondary sources and in-depth interviews with key informants and senior managers of Chinese affiliates in Italy. The evolution of the Chinese pattern of entry in Italy confirms the pattern followed by Chinese firms in other European...

Emerging economies are now becoming more central in global competition. To achieve this, many countries have invested to develop into ‘knowledge economies’. Universities have a role to play in this transformation, both as generators of new knowledge as well as actors that can interact with the local industry and contribute to its innovativeness. Th...

This paper investigates the geography of multinational corporations’ investments in the EU regions. The ‘traditional’ sources of location advantages (i.e. agglomeration economies, market access and labour market conditions) are considered together with innovation and socio-institutional drivers of investments, captured by means of regional “social...

We provide an empirical analysis of host country determinants of Chinese outward FDI for the period 2003 to 2008, using data disaggregated by country and industry. We want to assess the relevance of market-seeking, resource-seeking and strategic asset seeking motivations suggested by the theory on FDI determinants. Our results show that only FDI in...

This study investigates the motivations driving Chinese outward direct investment to Italy. The analysis is based on secondary sources and in-depth interviews with key informants and senior managers of Chinese affiliates in Italy. The evolution of the Chinese firms' pattern of entry in Italy confirms the model followed by Chinese firms in other Eur...

Since the beginning of the 1990s, the supremacy of 'Old World' countries (France and Italy) in the international wine market has been challenged by new players, such as Australia, Argentina, Chile and South Africa, which are recording stunning performances in terms both of export volume and value. This book demonstrates that such a spectacular exam...

Summary The Innovation Systems (IS) literature tends not to emphasize the crucial impact of international knowledge and innovation exchange and collaboration through, for example, inter-firm and intra-firm networks and Global Value Chains (GVC). In developing countries this aspect is crucial, with integration in GVC playing a growing and very impor...

From a development perspective an investigation of the changes that have occurred in the wine industry is of particular interest because it provides evidence on how emerging economies have been able to acquire significant shares of the international market in a dynamic sector. Based on novel empirical evidence, this paper shows that emerging countr...

One of the more recent aspects of the globalization process is the rise and the increasing outward expansion of multinational enterprises (MNEs) from developing countries. Among the more promising effects of this phenomenon is a potentially positive devel-opment impact: through outward foreign direct investment (OFDI) developing country MNEs acquir...

• The study investigates the motivations driving Chinese outward direct investment to Italy. The analysis is based on secondary sources and in-depth interviews with key informants and senior managers of Chinese affiliates in Italy. • The empirical analysis shows that the evolution of the Chinese pattern of entry to Italy is in line with the model f...

Amighini A., Leone M. and Rabellotti R. Persistence versus change in the international specialization pattern of Italy: how much does the 'district effect' matter?, Regional Studies. This paper investigates the evolution of specialization patterns for the Italian provinces over the period 1995-2005 by analysing the dynamics of the sectoral distribu...

This paper examines the impact of globalisation of production on the Italian footwear sector and investigates the structural changes taking place in some shoe districts as they join international production networks. The following questions are discussed: Are Italian footwear districts specialising in particular phases of the production cycle? Is t...

We study the international dimension of Innovation System. It is crucial to understand how different patterns of GVC governance influence learning and innovation of firms. This implies addressing two main groups of research questions:• How does the learning mechanism operate in different chains? In which chains are lead firms promoting learning thr...

Does enterprise participation in global markets ensure sustainable income growth? Policies have often been designed in the belief that this is true, but competitiveness and participation in international markets may take very different forms, and developing countries do not always benefit. This book presents a series of rich and original field stud...

From a development perspective an investigation of the changes that have occurred in the wine industry is of particular interest because it provides evidence on how emerging economies have been able to acquire significant shares of the international market in a dynamic sector. Based on novel empirical evidence, this paper shows that emerging countr...

The wine industry represents an interesting case of catching up of latecomers in traditional agro- food industry. In this paper we argue that the lite rature on the sectoral systems of innovation (SSI) provides a useful analytical framework for in terpreting the industry trajectory of co- evolution along different dimensions and the catchi ng up ex...

As the contributions to this volume show, theorizing about CoPs is still very much a project under construction. The discussions in this collection are rather open-ended, but this is not necessarily a liability. It is, however, an invitation to conclude the volume with a chapter that summarizes the findings and details directions for further resear...

This study investigates the motivations driving Chinese outward direct investment to Italy. We assess distinctive sources of competitiveness of Chinese firms. The analysis is based on secondary sources and on interviews to key informers and senior managers of Chinese affiliates in Italy. The preliminary findings show that the evolution of the Chine...

The aim of this article is to analyse the nature and extent of knowledge and information networks in an Italian wine cluster. Moreover, the relation between firms' characteristics and the knowledge network structure is also explored. The empirical findings show that knowledge is unevenly distributed in clusters and that networks of knowledge and in...

The rising role of developing country MNEs in international markets is one of the most recent aspects of the globalization process. Recent data on the outward expansion of firms from developing countries have induced many scholars to analyze in depth this phenomenon, both theoretically and empirically. This study is a aimed at systematically and cr...

This paper explores the determinants of the linkages between industry and research organizations – including universities. We present new evidence on three wine producing areas – Piedmont, a region of Italy, Chile, South Africa - that have successfully reacted to the recent structural changes experienced in the industry worldwide. Based on an origi...