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The current stage of globalization involves geographically dispersed research anddevelopment (R&D) investments that are not confined to advanced economies.These cross-border R&D investments are driven by multinational enterprises’(MNEs’) strategies for exploring and/or exploiting foreign locations. In this paper,we analyse location choice and the moderating effect of project-level investmentstrategy (i.e. exploration or exploitation) and type of host economy (i.e. advancedor emerging) on the importance of the innovation framework and local innovationcapabilities. Our analysis of 588 R&D-related foreign direct investment (FDI) projectsin the pharmaceutical and biotech industries during the 2006–2016 period revealsthat whereas a host country’s innovation framework and capability overall do affectthe location decision, their ultimate effects are conditional on the combination ofproject-level investment strategy and type of economy. Our findings have policyimplications for FDI policies aiming at enhancing linkages between MNEs andlocal actors and national science, technology, innovation and educational policiesand programmes.

Empirical evidence shows that firms’ internationalization process can be non-linear and often includes de-internationalization events. This study focuses on one type of de-internationalization event – a firm’s decision to exit an export market – and asks how international experience affects its probability of occurrence. In particular, this study complements existing literature by looking at the effect of import-based market experience – considered as a source of market-specific knowledge prior to export market entry – on the probability of a firm exiting an export market. Conceptually, this study contrasts two views on the consequences of increased market knowledge and hypothesizes that, from a learning perspective, import-based market experience ought to reduce export market exit, whereas, from a sunk cost logic, it ought to increase export market exit. Using duration analysis of detailed data on the internationalization history of 1920 Danish firms, I find that the sunk cost logic primarily explains the relationship between import-based market experience and a firm’s probability to exit an export market, and that the effect is strongest for exports to similar destinations. Further analysis shows that this result is partly driven by experimentation-like export behavior by firms with import-based market experience.

Are Born Globals really different from firms with other start-up histories? We address this question based on a unique longitudinal data set that tracks all Danish manufacturing start-ups founded between 1994 and 2008 (23,201 firms). This novel application of register data allows us to provide the first detailed account of Born Globals compared to proper control groups of other start-ups. Chiefly we investigate firm performance, which in turn permits interference on socioeconomic impact. We find that the occurrence of BGs is not specific to certain sectors, nor does their frequency change in light of rapid ICT progress. However, we find that Born Globals have significantly higher turnover and employment levels as well as job growth rates. Moreover, they show a considerably wider market reach, but little to no productivity advantage compared to firms with less or later internationalization. Thus, Born Globals are special in some but not all aspects.

This paper investigates the effect of market familiarity at export market entry on the subsequent survival of firms in individual export markets. Applying diverse theoretical lenses, competing hypo...

This paper studies the importance of export spillovers in a firm's decision to enter specific export markets and extends the current state of the literature by assessing different mechanisms through which they may occur, namely (i) labour movement, (ii) intra-industry spillovers and (iii) inter-industry linkages. We do so by exploiting a unique data set covering the universe of manufacturing firms in Denmark for the period 1995–2006 which combines transaction-level export data, firm accounting data, employer–employee linked data and information from yearly input–output tables. We corroborate the literature on export spillovers by presenting robust evidence of destination-specific export spillovers. The results suggest that labour mobility as well as intra- and inter-industry linkages (backward linkages) are important channels for export spillovers, while presenting heterogeneous effects across firms of different size and export markets.

This paper expands our understanding of the role of knowledge derived from other sources than the firms’ own experience in international markets on firms’ internationalization and does so by focusi...