Search results

This study aims to investigate the key roles of human and relational capital in the export orientation and competitiveness of knowledge-intensive cooperative companies. It is also aimed to examine the moderating role of marketing knowledge capabilities.

Data from 552 managers at 86 companies, selected from knowledge-intensive export cooperatives, were analyzed with structural equation modeling with the partial least squares approach.

Results indicate that both human and relational capital exert considerable effects on competitiveness. Export orientation was a driving factor for cooperatives’ competitiveness. Human and relational capital fostered the effects of export orientation on competitiveness. Moreover, marketing knowledge capabilities were found to moderate the relationships between human and relational capital and export orientation, as well as between export orientation and competitiveness.

By highlighting the role of human capital and relational capital in export orientation and competitiveness, this study offers an analysis of important managerial processes within cooperative companies, which have not been sufficiently addressed in previous research. This research also demonstrated the moderating role of marketing knowledge capabilities in strengthening relationships between human and relational capital and export orientation, as well as between export orientation and competitiveness, which has been neglected in previous studies. These findings provide academics and practitioners with a new framework for examining the relationships between these constructs, which will enable them to establish strategies for achieving a competitive advantage.

This study aims to establish the position of the European Union (EU-28) countries in the dynamics of international trade openness linkages and the Global Competitiveness Index (GCI) in correlation with the gross domestic product (GDP) per capita, research and development (R&D) expenditures, innovation capability and information and communication technology (ICT) adoption.

In the panel data set, comparative analyses were applied to scatter diagrams, correlation and regression analyses and structural equation models using Eurostat and World Economic Forum (WEF) data for the EU-28 countries in the period 2008–2019.

The empirical results did not confirm the hypotheses that a positive correlation exists between GCI and trade openness indicators and between GDP per capita and GCI. The ICT adoption and innovation capability increase GCI, which affects GDP per capita.

The empirical results provide a better understanding of the importance of trade policies, particularly in terms of trade openness and trade shares of the EU-28 countries, as it could contribute to increasing the GCI of the EU-28 countries. Furthermore, the results of this study underline the importance of ICT adoption and innovation capability and the need for appropriate government policies that improve global competitiveness.

This study, through empirical analysis, demonstrates the existence of correlations between trade openness (exports as % of GDP, imports as % of GDP and export market shares as % of world trade), R&D expenditures, innovation capability, ICT adoption, GDP per capita and the GCI in the EU-28 countries. In addition, this study contributes managerial and policy-based implications on driving forces of global competitiveness.

This study aims to identify the main factors affecting export competitiveness and its barriers, focusing on the minerals industry so that a scale is achieved for measuring export competitiveness in this industry.

The research was conducted with a mixed method approach in the minerals industry. Among the active companies involved in this industry, 34 export companies and export management companies were selected and evaluated. In the qualitative phase, 18 experts and managers of the industry were interviewed to identify the factors affecting the export competitiveness of these companies and the barriers ahead of them. In the quantitative phase, a questionnaire was distributed among 412 managers and experts in this industry to categorize the identified factors and to measure the relationships among them. For data analysis in the qualitative phase, theme analysis was used. For the quantitative phase, factor analysis and structural equation modeling were adopted.

In addition to identifying the main components affecting the competitiveness of companies in exporting minerals as well as the main barriers ahead of them, the findings of the current research categorized these components using factor analysis. These components were categorized into factors, such as manufacturing factors, demand conditions, related and supporting industries, structural factors, competitive strategy and governmental supports. Afterward, their impacts on export competitiveness were measured and supported.

Although some studies have been conducted to examine the competitiveness in different industries, no research has been found that has examined and identified the main factors affecting export competitiveness and their impacts in the minerals industry with a mixed quantitative and qualitative approach. The findings of this research may help managers and policymakers, at the industrial and national levels, to reach a scale for assessing the export companies involved in this industry by identifying the most essential factors of export competitiveness of minerals. Furthermore, the findings of this research can act as a model for future researchers to develop a scale for export competitiveness in other industries.

This paper aims to identify the impact of economic integration on trade competitiveness and demonstrate its effects on trade and investment performance of member nations.

The study compiles some price indices to provide a systematic assessment of competitiveness in the BRICS region. The panel regression framework estimates the impact of integration on trade competitiveness and the external sector performance of BRICS nations.

The findings of the research highlight the prospects for strong, closer and sustained integration in BRICS and, more importantly, the contribution of competitiveness to FDI receipts and export growth.

The assessment of exports and investment experiences of BRICS nations, particularly China and India, provides further evidence in support of the logical design and strategic use of their foreign trade policies.

The economic partnership that wants to sustain this high road to global economic space needs strategic orientations to promote their partnership in other interest areas to make the cooperation more competitive in price terms.

The purpose of this paper is to focus on the impact of country-level factors and aim to find out how the factors affect the export competitiveness of agricultural industries from emerging markets. Agricultural industries have been traditionally one of the important contributors to the increased exports from emerging markets.

The revealed comparative advantage (RCA) approach is used to define the export competitiveness of agricultural industries in emerging markets. Regression and factor analysis are used to find out the relationship between export competitiveness and important country-level factors, such as wage cost, irrigated land area, food price index, export of agriculture products, domestic consumption demand and exchange rate, against US dollars of different countries from emerging markets.

Export of agriculture products, irrigated land area and exchange rate against US dollars were found to have positive relationship with export competitiveness of agriculture industry. On the other hand, labor cost and domestic consumption demand were found to have a negative relationship with the export competitiveness.

In transformation of emerging economies, a higher level of export, larger area of irrigated land and stable exchange rate of US dollars will benefit the agriculture export of emerging markets. The rising wage cost and domestic consumption need can restrain the export competitiveness of emerging markets.

The research offers important hints for emerging markets to find their own ways to maintain a sustainable competitive advantage in export market by controlling the country-level factors. Also, it revealed the future problems that can appear in the transformation, with practical suggestions following. This research will be helpful to both policy-makers and global managers.

This study aims to fundamentally focus on the comparative advantage measurement and the trend of change in the international competitiveness of five Thai economic products exporting to the People’s Republic of China during the first half of the 2010s via the analysis of the revealed comparative advantage (RCA) index and market share.

The RCA index has been computed to show the comparative advantages of the product to a certain extent: whether it is cost-effective to produce that product in a certain location compared to opportunity cost of the resources in producing that product. The data set of number and value of five important export products from Thailand to China during 2010-2013 has been obtained from the Thai Ministry of Commerce and Thai-Chinese Business Information Centre.

The study reveals that of these five important economic products, cassava has the highest comparative advantage and continues to have a rapid growth trend, whilst computer equipment and components have been shown to have comparative disadvantage and the lowest comparative advantage index scores.

Measuring with various sophisticated indices may provide clearer results. Also, according to unavailability of data set, the four-year period may not be able to show the long-term trend of competitiveness. Future studies are encouraged to study in the longer-term period with numerous indices.

The research also provides policy implications and measures to develop each sector to enhance competitiveness.

This is the original attempt to use both indices to assess the competitiveness of important Thai exports to the Chinese market.

Pakistan’s natural endowment of labour and land is suitable for labour-intensive agriculture and manufacturing sector. This study aims to investigate international trade competitiveness of Pakistan in 14 major industries of agriculture and manufacturing sector, accounting more than 85 per cent of total export receipts.

The competitiveness of Pakistan in selected industries of agriculture and manufacturing sectors from 2003 to 2014 is investigated using the revealed comparative advantage (RCA) index, introduced by Balassa (1965) on HS data collected from the United Nations Commodity Trade database. The obtained indices in this study are then subjected to panel regression analysis to investigate the effect of domestic productivity growth and real exchange rate on international trade competitiveness of major industries.

The results show that the agriculture sector of Pakistan has higher comparative advantage in raw cotton, cereals, raw leather and fruits. The raw cotton shows the highest competitiveness of 54.46 which is followed by cereals (17.13), leather (9.83) and fruits (1.97). The RCA of the manufacturing sector shows that textile (54.85), carpets (10.72), sports goods (2.18) and beverages (1.47) have higher competitiveness. The RCA, in relatively capital-intensive industries, shows a high disadvantage. The trend analysis shows distorted competitiveness in labour-intensive, textile, carpet and footwear industries. The results of panel regression analysis show that the domestic productivity growth and real exchange rate depreciation have a significant positive impact on the international competitiveness of selected industries. The study urges Pakistan to make its macroeconomic environment investment-friendly and encourage investment in deteriorating labour-intensive industries.

Globalisation has significantly increased international competition, and Pakistan is losing its competitiveness in labour-intensive industries owing to lack of domestic value addition and development efforts. The major problem with the productivity of these industries is the lack of proper infrastructure, acute energy crisis, lack of domestic and foreign investment and overvaluation of real exchange rate. The domestic investors are shifting their capital either to other domestic sectors and/or other investment-friendly countries. Policymakers in Pakistan should address the problems of these important labour-intensive industries. The government needs to understand macroeconomic uncertainties and make investment-friendly policies to encourage domestic and foreign investment. The future studies should perform in-depth research to identify both microeconomic and macroeconomic variables responsible for deterioration in competitiveness of major labour-intensive industries in the agriculture and manufacturing sectors of Pakistan.

This study is a comprehensive examination into the nature and pattern of international competitiveness of Pakistan in 14 important industries of the agriculture and manufacturing sector which has seldom been investigated empirically. The obtained indices in this study are also subjected to panel regression analysis to explore the effect of domestic productivity growth and real exchange rate depreciation on the international competitiveness of Pakistan.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the influence of export logistics components: shipment arrangements, timely delivery, customs quality, trade infrastructure, and tracking and tracing on export competitiveness of firms in the East African Community (EAC).

The study adopted the Structural Gravity Model and the Poisson pseudo-maximum likelihood (PPML). PPML a nonlinear estimation method was applied in STATA on a balanced panel data for the period of 2007–2018. Data were obtained from World Bank International Trade Centre (ITC), World Bank Logistics Performance Index (LPI) and World Bank development indicators.

Results show that timely delivery and tracking and tracing of exports are positive and significant predictors of export competitiveness in EAC countries. Conversely, shipment arrangements, customs quality and trade infrastructure have no influence on export competitiveness.

The results of this study show that export logistics components of shipment arrangements, customs quality and trade infrastructure do not matter at the present in improving export competitiveness in the EAC. There is a need to examine the intricate nature of the EAC economy to further this study's findings.

The EAC partner states should embrace deep integration by removing the behind the border trade barriers in addition to other trade restrictions, to create a common economic space among member states. This will further shrink the delivery time and the tracking and tracing of exports hence improving the competitiveness of EAC exports within the region and outside. Also, common and harmonized trade policies and regulations should be implemented through mutual recognition agreements where countries agree to recognize one another's conformity assessments.

This study explains the complex dynamic interactions of export logistics factors in the EAC using quantitative data and that this interaction has an effect on the export competitiveness in import-dominated countries with less harmonization in their trade policies.

The purpose of this paper is to analyze the competitive position of Italian roasting firms in the international market, thus developing a multidimensional framework for measuring industry export competitiveness.

Considering that the objective is to evaluate the export competitiveness of Italian roasting firms, the author chooses “positive” and “ex-post” indicators, combined in a multidimensional and a multivariable framework. The two dimensions of competitiveness implemented are competitive performance and competitive potential; the author used four indices to evaluate the first dimension (export market share, net export share, net export index, revealed comparative advantage) and three indices for the second dimension (unit export price, relative quality index, relative export growth).

The evolution of the international context, with the emergence of new competitors and the spread of coffee consumption worldwide, creates new opportunities but also new challenges for Italian companies. In fact, both competitive performance and competitive potential have been worsening since the second half of the early twenty-first century because of the lack of innovation. A mix of external and internal factors explain this lack.

In order to recover their international competitiveness, firms should leverage on the combination of “traditional elements”–such as Made in Italy effect and the rich technical know-how, depending on their long tradition in the espresso coffee market niche–with “innovative elements,” depending on new marketing skills and competences; these new elements could be developed internally or, most fruitfully, acquired externally, through collaboration with other firms. In this way, Italian businesses could improve the relative quality perceptions of their offering.

Coffee roasting industry in Italy is a significant component of the Italian economic system and it contributes to the development of the Made in Italy abroad. Therefore, an improvement of its export competitiveness could be beneficial to the whole domestic market.

This paper constitutes the first attempt to study the evolution of the coffee industry in regards to the international competitive landscape. This is quite surprising, considering that coffee is one of the main segments of the food and beverage industry; it is the second most important commodity exchanged worldwide after oil and the third most popular beverage after water, tea and carbonated beverages. Then, the analysis of export competitiveness is developed combing two main research streams: the industrial organization literature and the strategic management literature. Moreover, this paper offers a methodological framework useful to measure export competitiveness also in other industries and countries.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the influence of innovation indicators: Internet usage, patent rights, innovation in exporting countries and innovation in the importing country on the export competitiveness of firms in the East African Community (EAC).

The study adopted the structural gravity model and the Poisson Pseudo Maximum Likelihood a nonlinear estimation method that was applied in STATA on balanced panel data from 2007 to 2018. Data were obtained from World Bank International Trade Center and World Bank development indicators.

Results show that innovation in the importing country, innovation in the exporting country and patent rights of exports are positive and significant predictors of export competitiveness in developing countries. While Internet usage is an insignificant predictor in the EAC.

There is a need to examine the complicated nature of the EAC economy to further this study's findings.

Exporting countries need to take deeper reforms as regards structural transformation to enable firms to integrate into the Global Value Chains (GVCs) to enable them to increase their productivity by reviewing the existing policies to match the changes in the market.

This study explains the complex dynamic interactions of technological innovation indicators in the EAC using quantitative data and that this interaction has an effect on the export competitiveness in import-oriented countries with less harmonization in their trade policies.