Synergistic effect of R&D and exports on performance in US manufacturing industries: high-tech vs low-tech

Purpose This study aims to explore the strategic impact of R&D and export activity on the diverse dimensions of US manufacturing firms’ performance. It also explores, using a predictive analytic model, the interactive synergistic effect that R&D and exports have on firm performance. Design/methodology/approach This study presents an innovative two-stage regression-neural network approach. Complementing conventional statistical analysis, the predictive backpropagation neural network explores the relative impact of R&D and exports and their synergistic effect on firm performance. Findings This study demonstrates the significant and positive effect of R&D and export strategy/activity on the economic performance of leading US manufacturing firms, particularly on their market-based performance (i.e. sustained growth rate or SGR). Furthermore, this study finds that the synergistic effect of R&D and exports on short-term performance (i.e. return on investment) is positive in high-tech firms but negative in low-tech firms. However, the synergistic effect on SGR is increasingly positive regardless of the level of technology. Originality/value In addition to traditional statistical analysis, this study uniquely investigates the relative importance of selected strategic variables, along with R&D and export activity and their differential synergistic effects, for firms’ economic performance in contrasting industry settings (high-tech vs low-tech).

Estimating wooden prefabricated building export potential from the Province of Quebec to the northeastern United States

The import activity of wooden prefabricated buildings in the Northeastern US region was over CAD 41.8 million during 2019, according to the US Census Bureau. This amount was growing at a 12.5% annual rate on average since 2017. There is evidence of a continued shortfall in supply for the construction market to be overcome in the region. The objective of this study was to estimate the export potential of wooden prefabricated buildings from the Province of Quebec to the Northeastern US region for the next decade in relation to the export activity and production capacity of the industry. The value of annual production of wooden prefabricated buildings in Quebec was up to CAD 578 million in 2019, according to iCRIQ. Export activities from Quebec are mainly directed to the Northeastern US, and were of CAD 18.8 million in 2019, or 81% of Quebec’s wooden prefabricated building exports. Results suggest that potential for wooden prefabricated building exports from the Province of Quebec to the US Northeastern region is important in terms of market share. The study also suggests that by drastically increasing the production capacity of the industry there is no chance that supply will overcome demand.

CHALLENGES FACING THE CURRENT STATE OF EXPORT POTENTIAL (IN THE CASE FOR AZERBAIJAN)

The purpose of the study is to identify the importance of increasing export activity in ensuring economic development and the main conditions for increasing the country's export potential, to stimulate exports based on an assessment of the current state of export operations. Moreover, the study determines the directions for increasing the country's export potential and improving the legal framework for its use, furthermore, compile the adequate suggestions and recommendations. The report identifies the importance of export activities in the modern system of economic relations; The main conditions for increasing the export potential in the Republic of Azerbaijan and the stimulated means of using the export potential have been studied; the need for legal regulation of state intervention to increase the export potential of Azerbaijan and promote its implementation was substantiated; the system of legislative acts regulating the implementation of export operations was analyzed; the mechanisms of realization of the existing state support in the field of export stimulation in our country have been studied; The directions of improving the legal framework to increase the export potential and stimulate exports have been identified in our country. Keywords: export, foreign relations, economic development, growth, international trade.

EMPIRICAL ANALYSIS OF EXPORTS OF ORGANIC AGRICULTURAL FOOD PRODUCTS OF UKRAINE

The main goal of the study is to identify endogenous and exogenous factors that determine the scale and dynamics of Ukraine’s exports of organic agricultural food products (OAP). The formulated goal caused assessment of a number of potential factors influencing the development of the export potential of the Ukrainian agro-industrial complex in terms of production and sales of organic agricultural products on foreign markets. The authors conducted economic and mathematical modeling based on the software product E-Views. The observation interval covers 2008-2019. Multifactorial regression model has been constructed and tested for heteroscedasticity, as well as causal relationships have been identified between the main indicators of supply and demand and the exports volumes of related organic products. This makes it possible for further forecast on Ukraine’s exports in the short and medium term. Methodology. The study has been based on statistics from international and Ukrainian institutions specializing in organic farming and trade, including FiBL (Research Institute of Organic Agriculture), the Federation of Organic Movement of Ukraine. Databases of the State Statistics Service of Ukraine, UNCTAD for the period 2008-2019 were also involved, which made it possible to conduct a full cycle of research procedures in order to identify the most significant factors influencing Ukraine’s export activity within related segment of the global market. The results of the conducted modeling show the following: achievement and increase of Ukraine’s relative advantage in international trade of organic agro-food products for the outlined years; the existence of strong connection between the volume of exports of organic agro-food products and the level of comparative country’s advantages in international trade; identifying a significant impact on exports of endogenous factors, namely the level of wholesale and retail sales on the domestic market of Ukraine as a factor that creates additional demand from the population and business of Ukraine (B2B and B2C markets) for organic products and enhances the attention of agricultural manufacturers to activities that combine the criteria of high profitability and public demand. Another endogenous factor is the volume of areas allocated for organic farming has shown insignificant impact, however, it allows to create resource conditions for increasing production and export activity of national business in a particular sphere on various directions, from meat and dairy products to production of organic fruit, vegetables, etc. Practical implications. Conceptual provisions, conclusions formulated by the authors based on the conducted econometric modeling, allow to optimize the measures of regulatory policy in terms of institutional support of conditions and factors contributing to promising activities of the national agro-industrial complex. This will ensure the implementation of the national strategy on sustainable development with its emphasis achieving environmental criteria of production and consumption, reduce the level of import dependence upon a number of strategically important food groups and, at the same time, increase economic efficiency of Ukrainian agricultural business. Value/originality. Prospects for further research in this area may assess the potential of international production and marketing cooperation between Ukrainian agricultural companies and non-resident companies in terms of limiting the latter’s access to the land market in Ukraine while finding flexible mechanisms to stimulate joint production and sale of organic agricultural products on international markets according to quality and safety standards.

Identifying port maritime communities: application to the Spanish case

The aim of this paper is to detect port maritime communities sharing similar international trade patterns, by a modelisation of maritime traffic using a bipartite weighted network, providing decision-makers the tools to search for alliances or identify their competitors. Our bipartite weighted network considers two different types of nodes: one represents the ports, while the other represents the countries where there are major import/export activity from each port. The freight traffic among both types of nodes is modeled by weighting the volume of product transported. To illustrate the model, the Spanish case is considered, with the data segmented by each type of traffic for a fine tuning. A sort of link prediction is possible, finding for those communities with two or more ports, countries that are part of the same community but with which some ports do not have yet significant traffic. The evolution of the traffics is analyzed by comparing the communities in 2009 and 2019. The set of communities formed by the ports of the Spanish port system can be used to identify global similarities between them, comparing the membership of the different ports in communities for both periods and each type of traffic in particular.

Domestic and export activity will improve in East Asia

Headline EAST ASIA: Domestic and export activity will improve

Determinants of High-tech Export in CEE and CIS Countries

Any government strives to stimulate export activity in high-tech sectors of its economy. Surprisingly, there are few empirical papers on the determinants of high-tech export to date. This study analyses the economies of Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) and the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) due to the differences they experienced in the transition period. To this end, we used the Balassa index, which is based on the concept of revealed comparative advantages. The research examines 73 groups of products from the automotive, chemical, mechanical engineering, electronics and electrical engineering industries in 27 countries from 1995 to 2018. Principal component analysis helped generate an indicator of comparative advantage of hightech industries for each country in each year. It is revealed that CEE countries, as well as the Baltic countries, have achieved significant success in the development of high-tech sectors of the economy, while the CIS countries have shown practically no progress in this direction. The article tests hypotheses on the impact of resources, foreign trade, macroeconomy and innovation on export activity in the country. The following factors stimulate the export growth in high-tech industries of the studied countries: level of wages and resource prices, openness of the economy to foreign trade; tax rate; unemployment rate; quality of human capital. We did not find empirical evidence of the positive impact of inflation, inflows of direct foreign investment, and the level of research and development (R&D) costs on the volume of high-tech export of the examined economies.

EL DESARROLLO TURÍSTICO EN LAS ISLAS VERDES DE CANARIAS: EL CASO DE LA ISLA DE LA PALMA (2000-2019)

La isla de La Palma (Canarias), una de las denominadas como Islas Verdes, ha mantenido históricamente una apuesta por un modelo económico basado en la actividad agraria de exportación. En las últimas décadas, ante la amenazante desaparición de la protección institucional a su principal cultivo (el plátano), ha variado su estrategia activando la actividad inmobiliario-turística como estrategia de desarrollo. Un cambio que acontece en una coyuntura poco oportuna, al coincidir con un marco institucional regional que controlaba el incremento de la oferta turística. El relato de las contradicciones institucionales acaecidas constituye el objeto de este artículo. The island of La Palma (Canary Islands), one of those called Islas Verdes, was historically maintained an economic model based on agricultural export activity. In recent decades, in the face of the threatening disappearance of institutional protection to its main crop (the banana), it has varied its strategy by activating real estate-tourism activity as a development strategy. A change that is at a timely juncture, in the same way as it coincided with a regional institutional framework that controlled the increase in the tourist offer. The story of the institutional contradictions that occurred is the subject of this article.

Managers’ intentions to pursue export expansion an entrepreneurial cognition perspective

Purpose Grounded in the Theory of Planned Behavior, the main purpose of this paper is to examine the influence of cognitive factors on the intention of a small and medium size enterprise (SME) manager to pursue the expansion of their firm’s export activities. Design/methodology/approach The authors created a research model and collected empirical data among owners and top managers of 127 Costa Rican SMEs. The data was analyzed using structural equation modeling techniques to reveal the relative significance and strength of the effects of every hypothesized relationship. Findings The results suggest that the perception of benefits and self-efficacy influence managers’ intentions to expand export activity. Managers’ intention to expand export activity, in turn, is associated with the levels of export commitment exhibited by the SMEs. None of the control variables seem to impact managers’ intentions. Research limitations/implications The findings of this study underline that the export development of a SME is to a large extent only possible if the manager’s perception of control over the export achievements is perceived to be high. SME managers need maximize their perceived level of controllability over firm’s export operations and achievements. This study relied on self-report data. Self-reports are the conventional method for assessing constructs regarding beliefs, and motivations of an individual. Its use in entrepreneurship research is proved to be reliable. However, the authors have to acknowledge that using self-report data carries the risk of common methods bias. Practical implications SMEs managers might benefit from strengthening the sense of self-efficacy regarding international business based on the results of this study. Originality/value This study provides empirical evidence suggesting that a manager’s cognitive characteristics play a crucial role in understanding export expansion of a SME. The results encourage future research to incorporate cognitive theoretical frameworks to examine factors determining international entrepreneurial intentions.

Export activity, R&D investment, and foreign ownership: does it matter for productivity?

PurposeThe paper examines the impact of export activity on productivity and how this effect is moderated by R&D investment and foreign ownership.Design/methodology/approachA time-lag effect is taken into account when examining the proposed model. Data are collected from the Annual Industrial Survey of the National Bureau of Statistics of China. A dataset containing 117,340 firms across the sample period (2001–2007) are used to test the hypotheses.FindingsThe results indicate that while R&D investment plays a significant role in strengthening the positive effect of export activity on a firm's productivity, foreign ownership surprisingly has a negative moderating role.Originality/valueScholarly interest in the links between export activity and productivity is on the rise. However, the bulk of research has been focused on understanding the effects of export activity on productivity at the country or industry level. Little has been done at the firm level. Another gap in the literature is that the mechanism through which the impact of export activity can be leveraged to enhance the firm's productivity has been largely ignored. To address these issues, the study adopts the learning-by-exporting theory to examine the relationship between export and productivity at the firm-level and how R&D investment and foreign ownership may explain how learning can be leveraged to enhance the firm's productivity. Finally, these relationships are examined in the context of firms from an emerging market, China, which is especially relevant for the learning-by-exporting argument used in this study.