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This paper aims to shed new light on the multinationality‐performance debate by examining the performance of standardizing versus customizing firms from Spain.

The reasons for variations in performance of exporting firms build on the industrial organization and resource‐based views of strategy, which are shown to be linked to the integration (standardization) versus responsiveness (customization) framework of international business. The paper also incorporates the Uppsala model and the home region nature of international business activity. It develops hypotheses for both standardizing and customizing paths of international expansion for exporting firms. The paper uses the Survey on Business Strategies which has the support of the Ministry of Industry of Spain. This databank collects data of a representative sample of the Spanish manufacturing sector. The paper uses fixed‐effects regression models for the period 2000‐2008.

The paper provides evidence on how firms with a strategy of product standardization follow an M curve‐fourth degree polynomial relationship between the degree of internationalization (DOI) and performance. In contrast, product customization firms are observed to follow an inverted M curve relationship. Furthermore, by using both models, an appropriate level of internationalization can be suggested.

The paper provides theoretical and empirical support for the different relationships of standardizing and customizing firms when expanding abroad. This paper is one of the first to find empirical support for an M curve relationship between the DOI and performance, and certainly is the first one testing and corroborating an inverted M curve.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the relationship between international diversification (ID) and performance in multinational firms by proposing a new and unified theory of multinationality that incorporates, integrates and extends previous concepts and hypotheses.

The study relies on data concerning the world’s largest companies, derived from the Fortune Global 500. An OLS regression analysis has been carried out in order to test a four-stage relationship between ID and performance.

On a final sample of 391 multinationals, this paper provides an empirical evidence that support the existence of a four-stage theory by using a relevant sample of “top” multinational firms.

This study has two main limitations: first, a single indicator was used to measure ID; second, some potential variables have had to be excluded due to data availability.

This paper offers some intriguing practical implications, as well: first, it points out to some thresholds where performances are higher at certain level of ID; second, it highlights that performance will face two kinds of decreases due to intra-regional and inter-regional liability of foreignness; finally, it individuates differences with regard to some firms’ characteristics such as home or host country’s behaviors and about the kind of industries in which they operate, as well.

This is one of the first studies that tests and finds positive evidences about a four-stage theory, regarding to the relationship between ID and performance. Moreover, it proposes other interesting results with regard to the differences between home vs host country-oriented firms and between manufacturing vs services multinational firms.

This paper aims to evaluate the past contributions of Multinational Business Review (MBR), identify research gaps and opportunities and provide a research agenda that addresses several sustainability-related and other contemporary challenges.

This study analyzes 400 papers published between 2003 and 2021 to map the MBR’s intellectual and conceptual structure using advanced bibliometric techniques.

The bibliographic coupling technique identifies core clusters in MBR papers, and subsequent content analysis of these clusters reveals the following five research fronts: internalization theory and the future of international business (IB) research; internationalization and firm performance; regionalization versus globalization debate; internationalization by emerging market firms; and global dynamic capabilities and firm internationalization.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first comprehensive analysis of past contributions of MBR to research on IB and suggests a way for MBR to play a seminal role in addressing contemporary challenges in IB.

This research seeks to develop a better understanding of internationalization patterns of agrifood firms and explains why different paths are adopted. Further, a conceptual framework to support public and private decision-making is proposed.

An exploratory qualitative research framework was developed featuring case studies about three highly internationalized Brazilian meat processing firms. Top managers were interviewed, and documents were collected to support the intraand crosscase analyses.

Results suggest that meat processing firms tend to adopt a dual internationalization pattern. Distribution-oriented foreign direct investment (FDI) is normally established gradually, whilst horizontal FDI – the establishment of foreign production facility – tends to be conducted through a fast-paced expansion mode. Interestingly, it was found that food safety issues play a central role in internationalization decisions.

An extension to the Uppsala model was provided by considering agrifood characteristics in the analysis. The results have broad appeal to managers and policymakers. Agribusiness managers could use the theoretical and empirical evidence to support their internationalization decisions. Policymakers can also use this research to gain a better understanding of how agrifood firms expand internationally to either attract or foster FDI.

The purpose of this study is to examine the influence of board characteristics on environmental performance in manufacturing firms of the emerging East Asian markets. The authors adopt a triple perspective of environmental performance that focusses on three major environmental areas including resource reduction, emission reduction and product innovation.

The authors consider three main board characteristics, namely, board size, board independence and board leadership structure, and investigate their impacts on a multidimensional construct of environmental performance. Specifically, both linear and quadratic functions are applied to address a possibility of the non-linear relationship between board size and environmental performance. The authors use fixed-effects estimations on a sample of manufacturing firms in the emerging East Asian countries between 2011 and 2016.

The study explores an inverse U-shaped relationship between board size and environmental performance. The authors also reveal that manufacturing firms are more likely to have better environmental performance when the proportion of independent directors on board increases. However, the separation of CEO and board chair roles has no impact on environmental performance.

The findings have important implications by identifying the role of a board of directors in implementing environmental protection strategies and by providing a foundation for corporate efforts to enhance sustainable development.

The study provides complete understanding of environmental performance as a multidimensional construct and sheds light on the influence of board characteristics, especially the inverse U-shaped influence of board size, on environmental performance in the East Asian manufacturing industries.

To reconcile the existing contradictory conclusions on the relationship between cross-border mergers and acquisitions (M&As) and innovation, this paper aims to propose a theoretical model of the impact of cross-border M&As on technological innovation and explore the moderating role of institutional distance from the perspective of springboard theory and new institutional theory.

Through the use of the two-way fixed effect model and the U-test method, the authors test the hypotheses based on a sample of cross-border M&A events of Chinese manufacturing enterprises during the period from 2006 to 2019.

The research shows that there is an inverted U-shaped relationship between cross-border M&As and technological innovation. Furthermore, formal institutional distance moderates the inverted U-shaped relationship in such a way that it reaches its turning point at a smaller scale of cross-border M&As, and the inverted U-shaped relationship is steeper when formal institutional distance is relatively high. The informal institutional distance moderates the inverted U-shaped relationship in such a way that it reaches its turning point at a larger scale of cross-border M&As and the inverted U-shaped relationship is flatter when the informal institutional distance is relatively high.

The research conclusions integrate heterogeneous views of the existing research, further clarify the influence mechanism and boundary conditions between cross-border M&As and technological innovation, identify the different moderating roles of formal institutional distance and informal institutional distance and enrich the literature on knowledge transfer and recombinant innovation during post-merger integration.

The existence of the regional Kuznets curve, i.e. an inverted U-shaped relationship between regional disparity and economic development is widely debated and discussed. The bell-shaped curve of the spatial growth process where during the initial phase inequality increases and then reduces is theoretically supported by Myrdal (1957), Hirschman (1958), and Williamson (1965). It becomes important to understand regional Kuznets curve globally. Understanding the relationship between regional disparity and economic development becomes essential for public policy for balanced regional growth.

Regional Kuznets Curve which is an inverted U-shaped relationship between regional disparity and economic development is not a new phenomenon. Theoretical framework by Myrdal (1957), Hirschman (1958), and Williamson (1965) support the an inverted U-shaped relationship. To understand the relationship between regional disparity and economic development, the authors investigate the regional Kuznets curve by using data for 184 countries and 1765 subnational regions. Using parametric, semi-parametric, and non-parametric, it is found that there exists an inverted U-shaped relationship between regional disparity and economic development. The presence of the regional Kuznets curve is observed. As the theoretical framework suggests, regional inequality increases with income initially and decreases after attaining a certain level of income. This study identifies two stages of divergence-convergence where in the first stage, divergence across regions in a country happens with increasing income and in the later stage, convergence across regions in a country occurs with increasing income.

Using the parametric approach (panel data analysis), semi-parametric and non-parametric approaches, it is found that there exists a regional Kuznets curve. It is found that there exists an inverted-U relationship between regional inequality and per capita GNI. This suggests that the divergence-convergence passes through two stages. In the first stage, divergence across regions in a country happens with increasing income while in the later stage convergence occurs.

This research work has done three important things which fill the research gap that exists in the literature: (1) constructing the Gini coefficient to measure the regional inequality for 184 countries using 1765 subnational regional data; (2) using a parametric approach (panel data analysis) to understand the regional Kuznets phenomenon and (3) using a semi-parametric approach and non-parametric approach to understand the regional Kuznets phenomenon.

The purpose of this paper is to provide a survey of the empirical literature on environmental Kuznets curve (EKC) estimation of carbon dioxide (CO₂) emissions over the period of 1991–2017.

This survey categorizes the studies on the basis of power of income in empirical models of EKC. It has been hypothesized that the EKC shows an inverted U-shaped association between economic growth and CO₂ emissions.

For all the contexts, the results of EKC estimation for CO₂ emissions are inconclusive in nature. The reasons behind this discrepancy can be attributed to the choice of contexts, time period, explanatory variables, and methodological adaptation.

The future studies in this context should not only consider new set of variables (e.g. corruption index, social indicators, political scenario, energy research and development expenditures, foreign capital inflows, happiness, population education structure, public investment toward alternate energy exploration, etc.), but also the data set should be refined, so that the EKC estimation issues raised by Stern (2004) can be addressed.

By far, no study in the literature of ecological economics has focused on the empirical estimation of EKC for CO₂ emissions. This particular context has been used for this study, as CO₂ is one of the highest studied pollutants in the ecological economics, and especially within the EKC hypothesis framework.

Agricultural carbon productivity considers the dual goals of “agricultural economic growth” and “carbon emission reduction”. Improving agricultural carbon productivity is a requirement for promoting green and low-carbon development of agriculture. Agricultural production agglomeration is widespread worldwide, but the relationship between agricultural production agglomeration and agricultural carbon productivity is inconclusive. This paper aims to study the impact of agricultural production agglomeration on agricultural carbon productivity, which is conducive to a better understanding of the relationships among agglomeration, agricultural economic development and carbon emission, better planning of agricultural layout to build a modern agricultural industrial system and achieve the goal of carbon peaking and carbon neutrality.

Based on China's provincial data from 1991 to 2019, this paper uses non-radial directional distance function (NDDF) and Metafrontier Malmquist–Luenberger (MML) productivity index to measure total factor agricultural carbon productivity. Subsequently, using a panel two-way fixed effect model to study the effect and mechanism of agricultural production agglomeration on agricultural carbon productivity, and the two-stage least squares method (IV-2SLS) is used to solve endogeneity. Finally, this paper formulates a moderating effect model from the perspective of the efficiency of agricultural material capital inputs.

The empirical results identify that Chinese provincial agricultural carbon productivity has an overall growth trend and agricultural technological progress is the major source of growth. There is an inverted U-shaped relationship between agricultural production agglomeration and agricultural carbon productivity. The input efficiency of agricultural film, machine and water resources have moderating effects on the inverted U-shaped relationship. Agricultural production agglomeration also promotes agricultural carbon productivity by inhibiting agricultural carbon emissions in addition to affecting agricultural input factors and its internal mechanisms are agricultural green technology progress and rural human capital improvement.

This paper innovatively adopts the NDDF–MML method to measure the total factor agricultural carbon productivity more scientifically and accurately and solves the problems of ignoring group heterogeneity and the shortcomings of traditional productivity measurement in previous studies. This paper also explains the inverted U-shaped relationship between agricultural production agglomeration and agricultural carbon productivity theoretically and empirically. Furthermore, from the perspective of agricultural material capital input efficiency, this paper discusses the moderating effect of input efficiency of fertilizers, pesticides, agricultural film, agricultural machines and water resources on agricultural production agglomeration affecting agricultural carbon productivity and answers the mechanism of carbon emission reduction of agricultural production agglomeration.