Search results

In the corporate world, there is no certainty of survival. This research aims to identify firm-level factors that increase or decrease a firm's probability of exit and survival.

The study examines 153 listed textile sector firms in Pakistan over a 10-year period from 2009 to 2018, comprising 1,413 observations. The semi-parametric Cox regression model is used to process the results.

The study finds that larger and exporting firms are more likely to survive, while those with a high ratio of fixed assets to total assets, high expenditure on advertising and variable costs are less likely to survive. The relationship between age and firm survival is inconclusive.

Adaptability to the external environment provides a competitive advantage that is crucial for textile firms to reduce their chances of exit. The research is valuable for strategic managers and policymakers to identify focus areas to prevent firm exit.

This study supports the active learning theory, which suggests that new entrants in the textile sector of Pakistan should focus on becoming active market players, increasing efficiency and reducing variable costs to survive.

In the current competitive era of industrialization, a significant level of innovation is necessary to meet the growing competition. There are many economic forces that determine the pace of innovation within a country. Among others, this study aims to focus on exploring the relevant role of corruption control (CC) in determining the innovation level.

For empirical analysis, the authors sample the 24 years of data (1996–2019) of Asian economies and use the fully modified ordinary least square (OLS) and dynamic OLS models to check the regression among variables. The selection of both techniques is based upon the empirical suggestions offered by unit root testing and the Johansen cointegration test.

The empirical findings infer the positive and statistically significant role of CC in boosting innovation. Strengthening the corruption-free environment encourages innovation activities within the country. In addition, foreign direct investment has a negative relationship with CC while financial development, economic growth, export volume and government subsidies positively determine the innovation level.

Based on empirical analysis, it is suggested that the policy officials should do more focus on CC to enhance the competitiveness of the country through more innovation.

The empirical analysis robust the findings of existing literature in an alternative data set and offers innovative views regarding the role of other factors in boosting the innovation level.

This paper aims to analyze relative contribution of intensive margin (IM) and extensive margin (EM) to growth in India's agricultural exports for the period 2001 to 2020. It also analyses the determinants of IM and EMs through a standard gravity model.

The study uses export data from United Nations Comtrade, which is accessed through World Integrated Trade Solution (WITS) software. Data for the period 2001 to 2020 were compiled for analysis using the Harmonized System (HS) of commodity classification system at the six-digit level. This study decomposed the contribution of IM and EM in the growth of Indian agricultural trade by using Hummels and Klenow's approach. After performing the export decomposition analysis, the authors analyze the factors influencing IM and EM by using the Tobit regression model and Poisson pseudo-maximum-likelihood (PPML) method of estimation.

The EM grew at 1.24% per annum, while the intensive margin (IM) increased by 0.23%. The contribution of growth at the EM increased from 58.8% in 2001 to 70.2% in 2020. Export growth along the IM was relatively high for animal products and agricultural raw materials, while growth at the EM was an important contributor to the export growth of horticultural and processed agricultural products. There was a positive and significant effect of the free trade agreement (FTA) on export margins.

More disaggregated commodity-specific studies on value chain analysis would provide valuable insights into the issues hindering exports and realizing the untapped export potential.

There is a scarcity of holistic and recent studies illustrating the role of IM and EMs in agricultural trade growth, covering a large number of commodities and geographies associated with Indian agricultural trade. The study would be helpful to the stakeholders in facilitating informed policy decisions.

This study aims to focus on assessing the status of agribusiness enterprises in Nigeria. The specific goals were to ascertain the level of performance of different categories of agribusiness enterprises, and determine the institutional and firm-level characteristics that influence agribusiness performance.

The study is based on secondary data. These data were sourced from the World Bank business enterprise survey. The World Bank Enterprise survey employed a purposive sampling technique to select major staple agribusiness categories in Nigeria. The categories selected were those included in the World Bank's categorization of agribusiness enterprises. These categories include tobacco, food, textiles, leather, garments, paper industries and wood. The individual firms included in the survey were randomly selected from the selected agribusiness categories. In total, 721 agribusiness firms were selected. Data were analyzed with multiple linear regression at a 5% probability level.

The result of the analysis showed that small-scale agribusiness enterprises have the best performance based on an average of the five performance indicators considered in this study. The determinants of agribusiness performance showed that the credit constraint, size of enterprise, bureaucracy and corruption negatively and significantly affected the performance of agribusiness enterprises in the country, while the gender and educational status of the top manager were positively significant.

The findings imply that small agribusinesses are instrumental in the development of the agribusiness sector and by extension the economy of the nation.

This study enhances the understanding of how best to deliver improved system-level performance policy and wealth creation, especially within the agribusiness subsector.

There is a need for research examining how governments and firms responded to the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic. This study investigates the interdependence between governments and innovative small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) during the pandemic in relation to the dynamic capabilities and resource dependence theories.

We use World Bank survey data collected immediately before and after the COVID-19 outbreak and a generalized structural equation model to examine the mediating role of government support in the relationship between firm innovation, resilience and survival.

Innovative SMEs exhibited higher resilience and a better chance of survival during the pandemic, partly due to attracting more government support.

This study offers a novel understanding of the government’s role in supporting innovative SMEs during the pandemic. The findings have implications for how government support policies can limit the deadweight effect and the substitution effect.

The study explores the evolution of Indian domestic electronics manufacturing post-economic reforms and also investigates the lack of natural growth stages among Indian start-up/SME electronics manufactures.

The theoretical framework is inspired by Dawar and Frost's survival strategy theory that local companies may follow to overcome competitive threats from MNCs. The study adopts a qualitative methodology, more precisely, a phenomenological approach to walking through policy/regulatory reforms amid market distortions, technological gaps and colonial mindset from the perspective of Indian domestic electronics manufacturers. The study has adopted Gioia method of data analysis to inductively suggest a few research propositions.

The phenomenological approach revealed eight essential structure (essence) narratives to explore the complex issue that plague the industry: make in India, made in India, preferential market access strategy, equitable market access strategy, blue ocean strategy, competitive positioning strategy, technical capability and importance of policy/regulatory arbitrage.

The situation of Indian electronics manufacturing units is comparable to the bonsai tree situation, where natural evolution in business stages does not exist; they are born and die as start-ups/MSMEs. The study advocates for equitable market access by removing market distortions. The long-term solution may lie in making available locally manufactured products as a dependable alternative to the imported products or produced locally by MNC OEMs in terms of cost, quality, technology, volume, after-sale service and integrated supply chain.

While the favorable FDI policies, digital India and make-in India initiatives have strengthened domestic electronics production, it is yet to significantly impact India's position in global trade, including manufacturing and exports.

The study explores how the intention to export affects financing and non-financing variables for small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in a low-income country (LIC). The objectives of this study are (1) to discern between regional and global exporting and (2) to evaluate its policymaking implications.

Primary survey data were collected from 330 Rwandan SMEs and were analysed using ordered logistic models as an application of the expectation-maximisation iterating algorithm, which was tested for robustness using a sampling model variation.

The results show that alternative sources of finance are the predominant choice to finance the intention to export within and outside Africa. As the scope of export intentions broadened from regional to global, there was a shift in preferences from less formal to more formal lending technologies, moving from methods like factoring to lines of credit. Moreover, reliance on bank officers became more significant, with increasing marginal effects. Finally, the study determined that government financing schemes were not relevant for SMEs pursuing either regional or global exporting.

Whilst alternative sources of finance predominate the export intentions of Rwandan SMEs, establishing a robust banking relationship becomes crucial for global exporting. Despite this implication, the intention to export should prompt more transparent communication regarding government financial support programmes. There is an opportunity for increased usage of relationship lending to customise support for SMEs involved in exporting, benefiting both the private and public sectors.

This study accentuates how export distance alters SME financing priorities. The results also contribute to understanding how the value of relationship lending changes when less familiar markets (i.e. global exporting) are the objective. Moreover, the study offers a new perspective on how institutional voids affect entrepreneurial financing decisions in LICs.

This paper evaluates the level of the digital economy in Chinese cities based on digital industrialization and industrial digitalization. The research focuses on the effects of spatial mechanism of the urban digital economy on the quality of firms’ exported products.

The authors use the principal component analysis method to evaluate the level of China’s urban digital economy, and spatial metrology to measure the spatial effects of the digital economy on product quality.

The findings suggest that the urban digital economy can expand the quality of firms’ exports. The digital economy has spatial dependence, spatial spillover and spatial heterogeneity on product quality. At the same time, the spatial effect has a significant nonlinear effect and threshold effect. Further decomposition shows that industrial digitalization is the core factor of enterprises’ export products quality, and the micro-mechanism of this impact is mainly manifested in optimization of resource allocation.

The innovation of this paper is reflected explicitly in exploring the quality upgrading of export products from the background of the digital economy, providing a reference for the improvement of China’s export trade competitiveness and the cultivation of a trade power. The authors studied two different mechanisms (specialization division of labor and optimization of resource allocation) to explain the spatial imbalance of export product quality to provide empirical support for enterprises and government departments to formulate quality upgrading policies accurately.

This study aims to provide a detailed characterization of Argentinean exporting wineries using a new rich firm-level data set to understand how capabilities and business strategies differ among firms with different levels of involvement in the export market.

A survey was distributed among all wineries along all wine regions of Argentina; the 45-min questionnaire was answered by 230 wineries, a representative sample with a response rate of 26.3% of the total population of Argentinean wineries. The survey assessed the interaction between wineries’ dynamics and characteristics and their participation in export markets. In the comparative analysis, the results are presented by dividing the sample into four categories according to the export intensity of the wineries.

High-intensity exporting wineries in Argentina differ from other Argentinean wineries in several dimensions. In particular, the most internationalized Argentinean wineries are the most endowed with higher capabilities; they follow a specific business model emphasizing product differentiation, quality upgrading, brand building and the development of distribution channels. Exporting wineries from Argentina adopt business practices that differ from those that prevail among wineries that only target the domestic market. They have developed firm capabilities such as human capital and technology to play a critical role in quality upgrading for their participation in global wine markets.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this paper is the first to study the Argentinean exporting wineries using a firm-level sizeable representative sample.

The paper aims at studying the effect of management practices on the extensive and intensive export margins of Egyptian manufacturing firms.

The study relies on the 2020/2021 Egyptian Industrial Firm Behavior Survey (EIFBS) which comprises 2,383 manufacturing firms representing small, medium, and large sized firms located in different regions of Egypt: Urban Governorates, Lower Egypt, and Upper Egypt. It constructs an overall management z score for each firm to estimate its effect on a firm’s probability of exporting and value of exports using Ordinary Least Squares (OLS) regressions.

Results indicate that good management is associated with a higher probability of firm exporting as well as higher export revenues conditional on exporting, robust to controlling for the level of domestic sales. These effects do not differ by firm ownership or type of sector, but rather by firm size, with managerial competence raising the probability of exporting more for large-sized firms. Additionally, good management is associated with higher firm productivity, innovation and worker training propensities which gives evidence that it is both an efficiency and a quality enhancer. Moreover, monitoring and targeting practices have significant positive effects on both margins, while incentives are only significant for the extensive margin.

Firms that aim at enhancing their export prospects and revenues should devote resources to review and upgrade their management systems to boost their product quality and production efficiency. Policy-wise, the government should create a competitive market environment that is open to both domestic and foreign firms’ entry to stimulate the adoption of better management practices.

The paper is the first to explore the link between firm management practices and export outcomes for a MENA country (Egypt). It makes use of a recent survey, the 2020/2021 Egyptian Industrial Firm Behavior Survey (EIFBS). The findings shed light on the importance of different management components (monitoring, targeting and incentives) in driving a manufacturing firm’s export performance.