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When is it more profitable for multinational manufacturers to manufacture in high-cost environments and when in low-cost environments? While the literature offers many cues to answer this question, too little empirical research directly addresses this. In this study, we quantitatively and empirically investigate the financial effect of companies' production footprint in low-cost and high-cost environments for different types of production networks.

Using the data of 770 multinational manufacturing companies, we analyze the relationship between production footprints and profitability during four calendar semesters in 2018 and 2019 (N = 2,940), investigating the moderating role of companies' production network type.

We find that companies with networks distinguished by both high levels of product complexity and process sophistication profit the most from producing to a greater extent in high-cost countries. For these companies, shifting production to low-cost countries would be associated with negative performance implications.

Our findings suggest that the production geography of companies should be attuned to their network type, as defined by the companies' process sophistication and product complexity. Manufacturing in low-cost countries is not always the best choice, as doing so can adversely affect profits if the products are highly innovative and the production processes are complex.

We contribute to the scarce empirical literature on managing global production networks and provide a data-driven analysis that contributes to answering some of the enduring questions in this critical area.

The purpose of this paper is to analyze how important is co-location of R&D and production for firms originated from high-cost countries and to provide evidence of the relationship between the different strategies of location choices and co-location.

In order to investigate the relationship between R&D/design-production co-location and strategies of location choices for production, this paper uses a cluster analysis of 37 Italian firms that operate in fashion industry.

This article finds that co-location results in a dominant strategy for firms under the following conditions: high level of product customization, coordination difficulties between R&D and production, rapid change in production process technologies and product complexity difficult to be coded.

This paper presents some limitations in that it focuses only on fashion industry without considering other sectors.

This paper has some managerial implication in that offers some insight on decision making in organization. In particular offers some insights of how important is having an internal R&D/design function rather than collaborating with external designers in order to achieve competitive advantage in terms of product quality, product design and also brand name reputation.

This paper suggests that the co-location of R&D and production may improve the firms' performance considering the need for constant interaction between the two units. Moreover, it suggests that the co-location of R&D and production both within and external (within the firms' region and/or within the country) to the firms might be important. Furthermore, larger firms in terms of turnover have a greater preference to locate the R&D function close to the production function.

The purpose of this paper is to examine how companies should off‐shore complex product related tasks to low‐cost countries, without jeopardizing their competitive advantage and intellectual property, while building solid and sustainable business in the sourcing country.

The underlying case concerns a multinational, globally operating engineering company delivering complex system products used as part of industrial and social infrastructure, and its entry to off‐shoring and how it has evolved from a green field operation to sizeable value center over the past six years.

The case provides support to the fact that companies understanding that building permanent, knowledge‐based and proprietary presence with full product management responsibility in lower labor cost countries will be more responsive in serving customers, cost efficient in maintaining old infrastructure products and in delivering new ones in the future. Further, complex product business companies focusing on long term and knowledge based legacy building in emerging economies will develop, not only more robust global business platform for themselves, but they will also contribute to the sustainable development of the global economy.

The paper presents unique descriptive data on the overall outsourcing strategy of a global engineering company and how one of its off‐shoring units has evolved over time since its inception.

The purpose of this paper is to evaluate and contrast the welfare effects of free trade agreements (FTAs) and customs unions (CUs) on member and non‐member countries when tariffs of both members and non‐members are endogenously determined. It also aims to provide sufficient conditions under which both types of preferential trade agreement (PTA) are likely to lower tariffs on non‐members relative to that under most favored nation (MFN).

The paper employs a three country Cournot oligopoly model of trade with segmented markets.

It is shown that under symmetry CU members enjoy higher welfare relative to that under an FTA or MFN. Furthermore, the non‐member country gains from the formation of a PTA so long as the PTA's external tariff falls below a certain threshold. However, for FTA members to necessarily gain, their external tariff needs to be greater than this threshold but smaller than twice their MFN tariffs. Outside this tariff range, welfare effects of FTAs are ambiguous in the absence of further assumptions. The paper also isolates sufficient conditions under which a PTA member is less likely to impose a positive tariff on the non‐member relative to that under MFN.

Unlike existing literature, we do no assume demand linearity to obtain our main welfare results and use this assumption only for illustrative purposes. Another contribution of the paper is to provide sufficient conditions under which a PTA member is less likely to impose a positive tariff on the non‐member relative to that under MFN.

The purpose of the paper is to explore the economic repercussions of potential India–USA free trade agreement (FTA) on the trade of agricultural commodities at HS 2-digit level.

The analysis is undertaken by assuming tariff reduction in a phased manner using the World Integrated Trade Solutions (WITS)-SMART partial equilibrium model to identify the trade creation and trade diversion effects.

Overall results show that both the trading partners gain from the proposed FTA. Trade creation dominates over trade diversion in India's analysis.

An FTA between India and the USA could be an essential step toward more liberal trade regimes and provide enormous economic benefits to both countries. Government of both the countries should support deeper integration. This will create more job opportunities and generate prosperity in both economies.

There are numerous studies conducted on evaluating the impact of FTAs ratified between countries. But there are limited studies which evaluate the impact of the proposed India–USA FTA on the economies of both trading partners specifically on the agriculture sector.

Climate finance is regularly not only seen as a tool to efficiently combat global warming but also to solve development problems in the recipient countries and to support the attainment of sustainable development goals. Thereby, conflicts between distributive and allocative objectives arise, which threaten the overall performance of such transfer schemes. Given the severity of the climate change problem, this study aims to raise concerns about whether the world can afford climate transfer schemes that do not focus on prevention of (and adaptation to) climate change but might be considered as a vehicle of rent-seeking by many agents.

Future designs of international transfer schemes within the framework of the Paris Agreement are to be based on experience gained from existing mechanisms. Therefore, the authors examine different existing schemes using a graphical technique first proposed by David Pearce and describe the conflicts between allocative and distributional goals that arise.

In line with the famous Tinbergen rule, the authors argue that other sustainability problems and issues of global fairness should not be primarily addressed by climate finance but should be mainly tackled by other means.

As there is still ongoing, intense discussion about how the international transfer schemes addressed in Article 6 of the Paris Agreement should be designed, the research will help to sort some of the key arguments.

There are prominent international documents (like the Paris Agreement and the UN 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development) seeking to address different goals simultaneously. While synergies between policies is desirable, there are major challenges for policy coordination. Addressing several different goals using fewer policy instruments, for example, will not succeed as the Tinbergen Rule points out.

The integration of co-benefits in the analysis allows for taking into account the social effects of climate policy. As the authors argue, climate finance approaches could become overstrained if policymakers would consider them as tools to also solve local sustainability problems.

In this paper, the authors will not only examine what can be learnt from the clean development mechanism (CDM) for future schemes under Article 6 of the Paris Agreement but also observe the experiences gained from a non-CDM scheme. So the authors pay attention to the Trust Fund of the Global Environment Facility (GEF) which was established with global benefit orientation, i.e. – unlike the CDM – it was not regarded as an additional goal to support local sustainable development. Yet, despite its disregard of local co-benefits, the authors think that it is of particular importance to include the GEF in the analysis, as some important lessons can be learnt from it.

West European manufacturing has been going through challenging times after the global financial crisis of 2008-2009. Some countries (e.g. Sweden and Germany) have recovered from the crisis, while in others problems and job loss still persist. One of these problem countries is Finland. The purpose of this paper is to examine manufacturing strategy priorities and their performance implications in this country.

During the spring of 2014, a web-based survey was conducted, targeting Finnish manufacturing companies. In this study we focus on small- and medium-sized (SMEs) companies and link survey responses to financial performance data, which is available in audited annual reports.

Research results indicate that SME manufacturers in Finland put less emphasis in new product development, broadness of product line and after sales service, while showing high priority in delivery speed and punctuality. As the manufacturing strategy dimensions are connected to audited financial data, regression analyses reveal that superior quality is at central place for achieving higher revenues and profits. After sales service has a positive impact on revenues and new product development ability is connected to higher profits. Managing quality to meet specifications (minimum quality level), leads only into higher employment. Some evidence is shown in support of flexibility in terms of product changes having negative impact on revenue, while volume flexibility is connected to lower profits.

This research is limited to a single country, and is cross-sectional in nature. The primary data were combined with profit and loss statements in order to reduce common method bias.

It is evident that SMEs may adapt their manufacturing strategy, with emphasis on superior quality together with properly managed after sales service and new product development activity. However, it is worrying that head count in manufacturing SMEs is not connected to same factors, as are revenue and profit. It is suggested that flexibility in labour contracts and other regulatory support measures are needed to support flexible manufacturing.

Advanced economies and their remaining manufacturing companies have been receiving minor levels of interest in research. This is especially the case with SMEs, where this research tries to fill important research gap.

This article assesses the impact of Cyprus' agreement of association on the development and maintenance of trade with the EEC and Britain. It begins with a description of Cyprus' economic and trading structure and the agreement of association. The analysis is carried out by examining the growth rates of trade to and from the EEC and Britain at an aggregate and disaggregated level. Comparisons are made between these and those for other Mediterranean and less‐developed countries. Ex‐post income elasticities are also examined in a similar way. The study concludes that the agreement hindered the development of trade between the EEC and Cyprus.

This research has two primary goals: first, to develop a composite index that evaluates the degree to which Asian–Pacific economies are prepared to engage in public–private partnerships (PPPs), and second, to investigate the factors that have been most influential in the formation of PPP arrangements in the nations' infrastructure over the course of the period 1995–2016.

The study constructs sectoral and overall index of possible determinants of PPP. Subsequently, it examines each constructed index's role in PPP investment. The author also conducted a panel data analysis to understand the role of each of the potential determinants on PPP projects and investments. This paper analyzes the author’s empirical models using a range of cross-section and panel estimators, including Poisson, zero-inflated Poisson and fixed effect.

The study’s results based on cross-section analysis suggest that regulatory and institution quality, institutional arrangement and regulatory frameworks, financial market development and macroeconomic stability positively impact investment in PPP. Moreover, the results depict that financial market development has the most substantial impact on PPP investment, followed by macroeconomic stability and prior experience with PPPs. The panel data analysis shows that per-capita income, financial development, inflation, debt, resource import and fuel export are crucial determinants of PPP in Asian–Pacific economies.

Governments of the countries should promptly amend the important policies outlined in this study and adopt a more robust strategy to foster a competitive PPP environment. This will aid in maintaining transparency and gaining the confidence of investors. The study’s findings may assist policymakers in focusing on specific areas in need of improvement. Social welfare and industrialization are ultimately enhanced by the formulation of such policies and by attracting additional infrastructure investment.

This is the first attempt to rank countries on the basis of PPP enablers. Unlike previous studies, this study examines the role of a large number of indicators in determining PPP investment and projects in cross-section as well as panel data framework. The study also investigates the effects of PPP specific provisions and rules. Furthermore, the focus is specifically on Asian–Pacific countries, which are a mix of third-world, emerging, developing and developed countries. Focusing on Asia–Pacific is also crucial because the region is home to most of the world's population, and the region's infrastructure outcomes significantly impact their lives.

A longitudinal study of the international behaviour of Swedish suppliers is presented. Three different types of supplier are identified: simple suppliers, advanced suppliers, and own product suppliers. Factors influencing the internationalisation of these suppliers are discussed. It is concluded that the firms’ offer and the customers’ buying strategies influence the firms’ international behaviour. However, these factors do not determine the international strategies completely. Various entrepreneurs will choose various strategies. Three different types of entrepreneurs are identified: the marketing, technical, and structural entrepreneurs. The type of entrepreneur influences the firms’ international strategies in different directions.