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The purpose of this study is to analyze the influence of the firms' external environment on their export intensity. More specifically, it assesses whether domestic market characteristics such as domestic demand and general export environment related to tradability across borders affect firms' export intensity.

The authors use a sample of 29,266 firms from nine European countries, for the period of 2010–2016, and test several estimation methods (random effects models, Tobit models, and Heckman's selection models).

Results show that external factors such as domestic demand and ease of trade across borders are important determinants of firms' export intensity. Moreover, results reveal that firm's internal characteristics such as age, size and productivity also play an import role.

Studies about the influence of the firms' external environment on firms' export intensity are scarce because most of them are confined to a single country context. In this way, the present study contributes to the body of knowledge on the influence that external factors can have on firms' export performance by analyzing firms from nine European countries, which has important policy implications.

The issue of export instability exerts an enduring fascination for economists with an interest in the area of economic development. Over several decades a voluminous literature has emerged embracing debates on the domestic consequences and on the causes of export instability. The purpose here is to examine these debates and an attempt is made to set out different theoretical stances, to classify and examine empirical findings, and to indicate the directions in which the debates have moved. Such a statement of a review article's purpose is, of course, incomplete without more specific delineation of the boundaries within which the general objectives are pursued. Here that delineation has three facets.

This paper aims to examine the motivations of firms that issue global bonds. Specifically, it seeks to test whether firms are motivated to offer bonds in multi‐markets to raise more capital, take advantage of being well‐known in foreign markets and/or owing to poor domestic economic conditions.

A sample of global bond offerings of US industrial firms during the period 1995 to 2001 was studied. Logistic regressions were used to examine the determinants of the choice between global and domestic debt offerings. The factors that explain the stock price reaction of global bond issues were also analyzed.

The authors find evidence suggesting that firms with a good reputation abroad and firms that want to raise large amounts of funds choose to issue global bonds instead of domestic bonds. Firms also tend to issue global bonds when the domestic economy is weak. In addition, the stock markets do not react more positively to global bond issues than domestic bond issues, suggesting that the issuing cost of global bonds is not lower than the cost of domestic bonds.

Future researchers may want to investigate why some firms choose to issue global bonds while others choose Eurobonds when they want to issue debt internationally.

The findings of this study suggest that, although firms might be able to raise more capital by issuing global bonds, the issuing costs are not lower.

This is the first paper to study the determinants of the choice between global bonds and domestic bonds and examine the factors that affect the stock price reaction to global bonds.

Proposes that the concept of this study regarding market segmentation is at least as applicable to international marketing as to domestic marketing. States the three‐fold purpose is: highlight the nature and importance of international segmentation; to suggest an operational approach; and to review briefly some of the possible bases for segmenting international markets. Concludes that research should be direct not only towards identifying the relevant country and customer characteristics but also towards evaluating cost and benefits anticipated from segmenting on a given base.

This study aims to analyse the relationship between the internationalisation performance of the company and, on the one hand, the factors that determine the internationalisation strategy and, on the other hand, the factors considered as inducers of this internationalisation process. The purpose of this study is to relate the determinants and inducing factors of the internationalisation process with the performance of internationalised companies, trying to assess how these determinants and these factors contribute to better performance.

The authors sent out a questionnaire to Portuguese exporting companies, containing questions regarding determinant factors associated with both the characteristics of origin market and target market of the internationalisation process and internationalisation inducing factors. The questionnaire results were subjected to a regression analysis.

The results indicate a positive relationship with the characteristics of the domestic market, more specifically with the need to reduce and diversify risk and the need to win new markets and consumers. Regarding the characteristics of the foreign market, there is a positive relationship with the determinants: follow customers and favourable perspectives of growth in the new market. In relation to the internationalisation inducing factors, those factors that the entrepreneur recognises as the triggers of the internationalisation strategy, the researchers found the existence of a positive relationship with formal and informal contact networks, as well as specific employee skills, international experience and strong propensity for entrepreneurship and risk-taking.

This study presents some limitations. On the one hand, the fact that the authors used the questionnaires, which seemed to be the most adequate approach, brings as a drawback the reduced number of answers. Further collection is in order to increase the sample under study. On the other hand, the literature presents different approaches that may be tested as well as the possibility of including other types of variables that the researchers will address in future studies.

By analysing the relationship between company performance in the internationalisation process and the factors that determine and induce this internationalisation process, this study seeks to identify which factors entrepreneurs should favour and strengthen to obtain a better performance in the internationalisation process. In addition, the authors use the concept of inducing factors that represent the firm's characteristics that trigger the internationalisation strategy. In a complementary perspective, the authors intend to contribute to the identification of the factors that new Portuguese entrepreneurs should pay more attention to, when starting their internationalisation process and that will improve their performance.

The economic deregulation, in 1984, in New Zealand was followed by an influx of cheap imports which most affected the apparel industry. Firms which wanted to survive decided to export. Studies the dimensions of internationalisation of those firms. A modified version of Welch and Luostarinen’s model is used as it provides a broad framework to study internationalisation. Five case studies of small to medium‐sized manufacturing firms provide an overview of the dimensions of internationalisation and propose that a firm can be more internationalised in some dimensions than in others. Psychological and geographical distance still plays an important role in a firm’s internationalisation. The study confirms that regional trading agreements and economic deregulation have expedited the internationalisation of firms.

Given the fact that emerging economies have idiosyncratic characteristics, international marketing strategies of emerging-market exporting firms have been firmly acknowledged to be rather peculiar compared to exporting firms based in developed countries. In this sense, it is therefore incumbent to synthesize the stream of research on international marketing strategy with a particular focus on emerging-market exporting firms. Accordingly, the main purpose of this study is to critically assess the related empirical body of research, and to build a conceptual framework for further development by drawing on the knowledge gaps identified.

To serve the research objective, this study adopts a systematic literature review methodology. In this sense, 51 articles were content-analyzed as to theoretical underpinnings, scope of research, research methodology, and empirical issues; and a comprehensive conceptual framework and research propositions were developed.

The findings of this review delineate that the pertinent literature is characterized by some contextual, methodological, and empirical weaknesses. In a nutshell, although the last decades have witnessed a burgeoning interest; the pertinent literature is still at the introductory stage and needs additional improvement.

By addressing the research gap concerning the requirement to synthesize and compile the empirical line of research on international marketing strategy of emerging-market exporting firms, this review study provides novel and valuable insights into the existing knowledge on the subject.

The purpose of this study is to identify the main drivers which can explain the relative success of BRIC countries (i.e. Brazil, Russia, India and China), collectively and individually, in attracting foreign direct investment (FDIs). Unlike previous studies that have identified gross domestic product (GDP) as a major determinant, we find that for the sampling period 1980-2008, social variables (namely, high population growth and educated labor) and political variables account for 40 and 7 per cent of the variance in net inward FDI, respectively, and no importance for economic variables. Interestingly, for a sub-period (1999-2008), we observe the salience of financial (namely, sizable GDP economy, favorable net trade balance and controlled currency risk and sovereign debt risk) determinants of inward FDI (R2 is 44 per cent). On the other hand, when testing individual countries, it seems that FDI determinants are not universal as each country enjoys different characteristics and sources of strengths that attract FDIs. The implication is to focus more on those incentives that the host country is weak in to be able to optimize the amount of FDI flowing in from foreign investors.

Three blocks of variables were examined: economic/financial, social and political variables. The economic/financial variable set expands on a prototype developed by Dunning (1981), which distinguishes three types of influences on inward FDI. First, it suggests some domestic market characteristics to influence FDI. They include the market size and the direction of trade flows. Another set of economic/financial factors includes measure of the host country’s overall financial performance such as the inflation rate and the effectiveness of the service sector. Social factors of the host country are considered an important determinant of FDI. Our social model included: the degree of human capital development, the extent of urbanization, the quality of life and the adequacy of the health-care system. Political factors were also considered. Using the STATA statistical package, we run a regression analysis on our transformed data twice: once over the full sampling period (1980-2008), and a second time using a partial data set covering the past 10 years (1999-2008), after controlling for multicollinearity and other econometric problems.

Regressing net FDI inflows on all financial, social and political variables during the full data series (1980-2008), and after controlling for severe econometric problems, the nested block regression concludes that the social variables account for 40 per cent of the change in net inward FDI, followed by political variables (7 per cent). The nested regression for the past 10-year data series (1999-2008), however, shows the economic/financial variables block and social variables blocks contribute the most to FDI variations (R2 is 44 and 7 per cent, respectively), while political variables appear insignificant. The findings for each individual country show that the four countries have few common determinants.

Our results are not without limitations. Our sample is limited to BRIC countries that had attracted significant FDIs in the past two decades. Testing for a larger set of countries with smaller or less attractive countries included could be useful before any final conclusions can be drawn. Also, this research can be extended to cover the busted 2008-2010 years. It would be interesting if our results still hold in recent down market conditions. For example, in early 2008, there was a big credit crisis in the USA, followed by a universal market crash in September and October due to large financial institutions collapsing, which resulted in the recent bubble explosion. More recently, we witnessed the European financial crisis beginning with the Greece debt default (followed by fears in Spain, Portugal and potentially others).

Overall, our findings suggest that individual countries enjoy different levels of strengths in economic/financial, social and political variables. A country that strives to attract more inward FDI may consider focusing more on those unique country-specific incentives that it is weak in to be able to optimize its intake of FDIs.

The main goal of our paper is to bring updated evidence on the relevant set of incentives which have made the BRIC block the penchant for FDI, and whether these incentives are the same for each of the BRIC countries. Our paper makes three major contributions. First, it expands Mathur and Singh’s (2007) set of explanatory variables, especially to reflect the effect of financial markets and economic conditions (such as currency exchange rate risk, level of real interest rate, size of national debt, sovereign credit rating risk and inflation), new social variables (such as life expectancy at birth, people receptivity to foreign investors and the number of graduate degree holders) and new political variables (host country’s level of restriction on capital repatriation). Second, it brings more updated evidence by using a longer sampling period (1980-2008). Third, we test BRIC as a group and we retest individual BRIC countries. We also ensure that our results are free from econometric (autocorrelation and heteroskedasticity) problems.

Engaging in international business (IB) is a particular challenge to small and medium-sized companies (SMEs), representing a condition to ensure growth and longevity. Due to their limitations of tangible resources, these companies make use of their levels of knowledge and capabilities to reach new markets. This study seeks to ascertain the role, the typologies of the knowledge and capabilities required for access to IB, and how benefits may arise for SMEs from their international experience.

To achieve these objectives, the authors ground the insights on a qualitative study that gathered data from ten semi-structured interviews with leading entrepreneurs engaged in IB. The data were analysed resorting to the QSR Nvivo software.

The results demonstrate how (1) knowledge and the development of dynamic capabilities all represent determinant facets to engaging in IB and that (2) the knowledge and learning capabilities acquired and developed in IB context also result in positive returns in domestic markets.

Despite the rising of IB studies, the interaction between knowledge and capabilities from the perspective of accessing international markets has not received attention enough from scholars. The authors argue that both constructs must act together to reach and maximize the IB of SMEs and provide evidence that engagement abroad brings several other advantages beyond economic returns.

The U.S. antidumping legislation provides protection to domestic industries that face dumped imports. Restricting imports by imposing antidumping duties protects domestic firms from predatory pricing by foreign firms. At the same time it reduces competition in the domestic market. In cases where the industry consists only of one or two firms, import restriction can drastically reduce competition faced by domestic firms. This paper looks at the cases filed by the chemical industry to illustrate this possibility. The concentration of industries asking for protection and the impact of import restriction on domestic competition is studied.