Search

The digital and green transitions are crucial to the competitiveness of Europe and China. To strengthen their innovation efforts in this direction, it is essential to develop a technology ecosystem that promotes transdisciplinary research and combines digital and green knowledge. This chapter explores how the knowledge base in ‘twin’ digital and green technologies is developing in the European Union, the United Kingdom and China in comparison with other major players on the global technology scene such as the United States, Japan and South Korea. It investigates the Chinese policy programmes adopted to strengthen the knowledge base in this key area and analyses green digital patents. We conclude that Europe has an advantage over China in most of the twin transition technological areas investigated, but Europe has a few leading edges in the wider global landscape. The chapter emphasises the need for both competition and collaboration between the EU and China in driving the global sustainability goals with these technologies, which calls for ambitious public policies and collaborative efforts to address the challenges in greening digital technologies.

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 whether the green economy offers new opportunities for latecomer development and their ability to seize these opportunities. To understand how developing countries’ capacities to exploit these opportunities differ across cases, we focus on sectoral systems and, particularly, on (a) preconditions allowing exploitation of these opportunities, and (b) strategic responses of public and private actors in this respect. We identify four different scenarios: (1) effective opportunity exploitation; (2) missed opportunities; (3) active approach; and (4) distant opportunities. We conclude by assessing the options for policy to support developing countries in their efforts to encourage green development strategies, focusing on both the provision and augmentation of opportunities and construction of the requisite sectoral production and innovation systems.

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 joint transformations in GVCs. The aim is to provide a framework bringing together environmental upgrading and digital technologies in manufacturing GVCs. We find that the greening of the global value chains in manufacturing industries unfold in analytically separable steps: a) new patterns of demand preferences and consumer behaviours, b) new green strategies by lead firms and global buyers and c) enforcement of environmental standards and associated patterns of upgrading and downgrading across global supply bases. Digitalization in manufacturing GVCs have differentiated effects across the Global South. The importation and adoption of advanced digital technologies is still limited to a small number of countries (the so-called emerging economies) and their production at any scale is limited to an even smaller set of advanced economies plus China. Across most of the Global South, adoption rates of smart manufacturing and service technologies as well new technologies for data processing and analysis are very low and many firms still face challenges with adopting much older manufacturing and service technologies. Still very little is known about the extent to which key enabling digital technologies support the process of environmental upgrading in the Global South firms that are inserted into GVCs. This is because these techno-institutional waves are still concentrated geographically and the full extent of the ramifications across the Global South remains to be seen. This also means that synergy-creation is challenging. The small pool of literature identified for this study suggests that potentials are mainly limited to certain d

Technologies to mitigate climate change may diffuse from lead markets to the rest of the world through several mechanisms and make important contributions to the global green transformation. In this paper, we explore the role played by multinational enterprises (MNEs) in transferring knowledge and innovative capabilities in green technologies to their global subsidiaries. We posit that the degree of green knowledge transfer and innovative capability development in subsidiaries depend on: (i) the host country characteristics, (ii) the specific technology in question, and (iii) the mode of entry. The empirical analysis combines data on foreign direct investments with patent analysis. The results suggest that being a subsidiary of a green MNE has a positive impact on the number and quality of green patents produced locally. This green innovative advantage vis-à-vis domestic companies is larger in less developed countries and in those that are less reliant on oil rents, in particular if they already possess higher levels of relevant domestic innovative capacity. Furthermore, firm and sectoral characteristics also matter. The analysis suggests that green FDIs are more effective when technologies are characterized by low tradability and tacit knowledge. Finally, cross-border acquisitions are more efficient at strengthening green innovative capabilities than subsidiaries established with greenfield investments.

Standards measures of female ownership and management of firms included in the World Bank Enterprise Survey do not support the existence of a gender gap in access to finance in the Latin American and Caribbean region. Nonetheless, more precise measures show that women-led businesses are more likely to be financially constrained than other comparable firms. The evidence presented herein suggests that this gender gap may be driven by taste-based discrimination. This paper exploits a rich dataset that provides detailed information about female ownership and management in firms, allowing for further understanding of gender gaps in access to finance.

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 manufacturing is attracted by market seeking motivations. As expected, resource seeking is an important motivation for Chinese FDI in resource related sectors, which usually refers to countries with political fragile environments. Strategic asset seeking motivations are relevant for both manufacturing and services.

Presentación que da a conocer el estudio realizado sobre el desarrollo de los cluster y la cadena de valor. Da a conocer los casos de estudio durante los años 2002 y 2003, así como los resultados de los mismos. Asimismo, menciona las acciones a realizar para el fomento de la competitividad de los clusters.

Globalization poses the imperative for firms to link with other actors and find new ways to interact and learn from the relationship. Employing original empirical evidence and featuring new case studies from Brazil, Chile, Mexico, and Nicaragua, Upgrading to Compete shows that the form of governance matters most in these linkages, importantly affecting the upgrading process of local enterprises.

This paper investigates the evolution of specialization patterns for the Italian provinces over the period 1995-2005 by analysing the dynamics of the sectoral distribution in the Balassa index of revealed comparative advantages. The results show that underlying a relatively stable distribution of national comparative advantages over time, there are wide variations in local performance: only a few provinces demonstrate any stability in their specialization over the last decade, with the majority showing decreased specialization. We find a higher average degree of persistence for provinces with districts, but no systematic differences between provinces with or without industrial districts. District provinces show wide variation, with a few concentrating on their past comparative strengths, but many diversifying.

Obiettivo del lavoro è quello di evidenziare il ruolo che l’organizzazione territoriale e amministrativa gioca nei modelli federali. Un modello federale completo non implica soltanto l’autonomia locale di entrate e spese, bensì una diversa riarticolazione delle partizioni territoriali (aree metropolitane, comuni, province) e quindi dei rapporti tra globale e locale. Si propone a questo proposito uno schema di lettura dei cambiamenti amministrativi in atto alle diverse scale in risposta ai processi economici in atto. Entro questa cornice quello federale rappresenta un modello capace di rappresentare più compiutamente le nuove relazioni globale/locale, sia nel contesto internazionale che in quello italiano. In quest’ultimo, il dibattito sulla riorganizzazione delle partizioni amministrative alterna fasi di stasi e di riforme, spesso non concluse e incongruenti. Si evidenzia, infine, che l’applicazione di logiche contrastanti rende vana ogni iniziativa e che, senza una visione coerente e condivisa, sarà difficile giungere a una riarticolazione dei poteri locali realmente capace di rispondere alle sollecitazioni dei processi socio-economici in atto., REGIONAL AND PROVINCIAL GOVERNMENT IN ITALY AND EUROPE. The aim of the paper is to highlight the role that territorial and administrative organization plays in the federal models. A comprehensive federal model does not only imply local autonomy of costs and revenues but a different subdivision of the territorial partitions (metropolitan areas, municipalities, provinces) and therefore of the relationship between global and local. In this regard, it is proposed a reading scheme of the administrative changes taking place at different scales, in response to economic processes. Finally it is underlined that by applying controversial views, it makes any initiative useless. It will be difficult to achieve a new subdivision of local powers which are able to respond to solicitations of the current social-economic processes, without having a coherent and shared vision.

This book explores the external sources of industrial cluster competitiveness and examines how they complement, integrate and substitute local, intra-cluster networks. The novelty of this book is to merge the cluster approach with two other conceptual approaches which have become increasingly popular in cluster and development studies: on the one hand, the Global Value Chains and their role in cluster upgrading processes; on the other, the National Systems of Innovation (NSIs) and their role in supporting the development of clusters in a national territory. The book explores these issues with empirical evidence from different countries in Latin America, Asia and the industrialised world.

Multi-technology corporations making green foreign direct investments, such as in renewable energy, increase the capacity for innovation in their own headquarters, as well as in their subsidiaries. Access to environmentally friendly knowledge pools in the global economy gives them an advantage over non-globalised companies in sustainability-oriented innovation. Based on these findings, Vito Amendolagine, Rasmus Lema, and Roberta Rabellotti argue that deglobalisation may be detrimental to corporate innovation activities that contribute to the green transformation worldwide.

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 study alternative choices by the same firm and account for firm-level characteristics in investment decisions. The empirical results show that - other things being equal - MNEs prefer acquisitions to control activities in regions with stronger investment eco-systems, while they choose greenfield investments in regions with weaker systemic conditions. Moreover, the regional quality of government makes a fundamental difference to the nature of the investment projects attracted by regions: those with high quality of government can attract greenfield investments undertaken by the most productive MNEs. By improving their quality of government, local and regional policy makers can attract higher quality FDI to their constituencies, potentially breaking the vicious circle between low productivity areas and low productivity FDI.

Multi-technology corporations making green foreign direct investments, such as in renewable energy, increase the capacity for innovation in their own headquarters, as well as in their subsidiaries. Access to environmentally friendly knowledge pools in the global economy gives them an advantage over non-globalised companies in sustainability-oriented innovation. Based on these findings, Vito Amendolagine, Rasmus Lema, and Roberta Rabellotti argue that deglobalisation may be detrimental to corporate innovation activities that contribute to the green transformation worldwide.

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 foreign investments into the regions of the European Union. The empirical results suggest that EMNEs follow a distinct logic in their location strategies because they are attracted by the availability of technological competences only when their subsidiaries pursue more sophisticated and technology-intensive activities. Conversely EMNEs share some behavioural similarities with AMNEs in their response to the spatial agglomeration of investments.

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 filter” conditions. The introduction of a wider set of attraction factors makes is possible to empirically assess the different role played by such advantages in the location decision of investments at different stages of the value chain and disentangle the differential role of national vs. local and regional factors. The empirical analysis covers the EU-25 regions and suggests that regional-socio economic conditions are crucially important for an understanding of the location investment decisions in the most sophisticated knowledgeintensive stages of the value chain.

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 filter’ conditions. This makes it possible to empirically assess the different role played by such advantages in the location decision of investments at different stages of the value chain and disentangle the differential role of national vs. regional factors. The empirical analysis covers the EU-25 regions and suggests that regional socio-economic conditions are crucially important for the location decisions of investments in the most sophisticated knowledge-intensive stages of the value chain.

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 study alternative choices by the same firm and account for firm-level characteristics in investment decisions. The empirical results show that - other things being equal - regions with stronger investment eco-systems are more likely to attract acquisitions, while greenfield investments are more likely in regions with comparatively weaker systemic conditions. Howerver, the regional quality of institutions makes a fundamental difference to the nature of the investment projects attracted by regions: those with high quality of government can attract greenfield investments undertaken by the most productive MNEs. By improving their quality of government, local and regional policy makers can attract higher quality greenfield investment projects to their constituencies, potentially breaking the vicious circle between low productivity areas and low productivity FDI.