Recent trends in foreign direct investment and disinvestment in Belgium.

Investment; Trends;

The reorganization decisions of troubled firms: exit, downscale or relocate.

Decision; Firms; Management;

High-Growth Entrepreneurial Firms in Africa: A Quantile Regression Approach

This paper studies the growth performance of a large set of entrepreneurial firms in ten manufacturing sectors of eleven Sub-Saharan African countries. The focus of the paper is on identifying those entrepreneurs. attributes and firm characteristics that tend to generate a significant number of high-growth firms in these countries. To this end, we use a quantile regression, which provides a more complete estimation of the growth distribution of firms conditional on different attributes. The results indicate that especially firms that engage in product innovation, have their own transport means and are connected to the internet through their own website are characterized by higher growth rates and display a more skewed distribution to the right, hosting a higher number of high-growth firms. The effect of the last two variables, which relate to distance-bridging modes of infrastructure, points to the self-reinforcing growth effects.quantile regression, high-growth firms, firm growth, Africa

Foreign Investment and International Plant Configuration: Whither the Product Cycle?

We analyze the determinants of the decision to invest abroad in particular configurations of overseas plants for 120 Japanese firms active in 36 well-defined electronic product markets. We find support for a structured internationalization decision model in which the decision to produce abroad and the choice for a specific international plant configuration are treated as nested strategic options. Drivers at the industry and firm level push firms to consider overseas investment, and locational characteristics pull firms towards particular plant configurations. The product cycle still appears as an important force pushing firms to set up Asia-focused or global plant configurations. In contrast, plant configurations focused on the US and the EU are a result of restrictive trade policies or offensive market access considerations vital to technology intensive firms facing competitive threats in foreign markets.management and organization theory ;

Exit in globalising industries: the role of international (out)sourcing.

Exit; Industries; Industry; International;

Organisational ecology and growth of firms in developing countries, evidence from Côte d'Ivoire.

Industry; Technological change;

Internationalization strategy and performance of small and medium sized enterprises

Focusing on the timing and geographical scope of import and export activities of Belgian small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs), the paper analyzes the importance, structural features and performance implications of firms that recently started to export following the geographical configuration of their international trade operations and their year of establishment. The analysis allows us to separate firms that started to export in the period 1998-2005 into four distinct groups: born internationals, i.e. firms which were established less than five years before their first year of exporting and exporting to less than five countries in the same region (regional focus), born globals; young firms but with a more internationally diversified export portfolio, born again globals, i.e. firms similar to born globals but established longer than five years before their first exports and traditional internationalizers, firms established more than five years before their first export operations characterized by a narrow geographical scope of their exports. We find SME export growth to be driven by a small group of born global firms, accounting for 60 per cent of the total increase in SME exports between 1998 and 2005. Analyzing the structural feature of the different types of firms, we find born globals to be more productive and characterized by a higher R&D spending and intangible asset intensity compared to other types of traders. We next test if the typology matters for the observed export performance differences across firms over time. We find that born globals grow faster in terms of export sales, have a stronger commitment to export markets and are more likely to continue exporting. Born globals also have the highest failure rate, traditional internationalizers the lowest. These findings suggest strong risk/return tradeoffs among the strategies chosen by the different types of firms. Performing a dynamic analysis of changes in trade configurations of firms over the observation period, we investigate how these changes have an impact on performance. Specific attention is paid to firms that stop importing/exporting. Especially firms that move from being exporters to become two-way traders, i.e. also starting to import goods from other countries show the most marked increases in turnover and productivity. The final part of the study analyzes the relationship between export and import activities to particular countries following the sequence in which they occur. We find that the probability to start importing from a country is 4 times higher for firms already exporting to that country than for trading SMEs without prior export experience in that country.

Foreign investment and international plant configuration: whither the product cycle?.

We analyze the determinants of the decision to invest abroad in particular configurations of overseas plants for 120 Japanese firms active in 36 well-defined electronic product markets. We find support for a structured internationalization decision model in which the decision to produce abroad and the choice for a specific international plant configuration are treated as nested strategic options. Drivers at the industry and firm level push firms to consider overseas investment, and locational characteristics pull firms towards particular plant configurations. The product cycle still appears as an important force pushing firms to set up Asia-focused or global plant configurations. In contrast, plant configurations focused on the US and the EU are a result of restrictive trade policies or offensive market access considerations vital to technology intensive firms facing competitive threats in foreign markets.Foreign investment; International; Investment; Product; Markets; Model; Options; Industry; Characteristics; Trade; Trade policy;

The choice and timing of foreign market entry under uncertainty.

This papers considers the minimally required payoffs to different means of foreign direct investments (FDI), where the investment is irreversible and payoffs are uncertain. It is found that the critival profit level at which it is optimal to create a joint venture (JV) increases with (i) the share of the TNC in the JV, (ii) the uncertainty about the payoffs, and (iii) the difference in taxation between the TNC's government and the host country's government. Moreover, cooperative JVs will be formed sooner than non-cooperative JVs. Under non-cooperation, the optimal share of the MNE increases with uncertainty, and decreases with taxation. Under cooperation, the partners intend to minimize the share. The results obtained partially explain recent empirical findings on Chines JVs.Market entry; Investments; Investment; Optimal; Country; Cooperation;

Foreign ownership and productivity dynamics.

Domestic; Foreign direct investment; Investment; Working;