LIBRI DI SERGIO MARIOTTI

Greenfield foreign direct investment is commonly regarded as a strategic factor for the economic growth of a country. Unfortunately, Italy has experienced a significant decline over time of greenfield initiatives by multinational enterprises. This paper offers a preliminary descriptive analysis of trends and features of greenfield FDIs and relevant investors in the Italian industry during the 1998-2012 period. The paper benefits from unpublished information provided by the Reprint database developed at the Politecnico di Milano.

The increasing competition between governments to attract foreign direct investment (FDI) can be attributed to their prominent role in promoting knowledge-sharing, innovation and growth. The fact that Italy has always been a laggard in such initiatives has further blemished the country’s attractiveness to foreign investors. Based on the past experience of other nations and on the conceptual models advanced in the latest international literature, the paper suggests a design framework for general guidelines that may be of use to policymakers in formulating an effective policy to encourage FDI. The framework combines principles based on the country-specific competitive advantages and opportunities generated by international investments. Specifically, the paper identifies several policy measures and discusses their optimal mix with reference to the case of Italy.

Trends in FDIs after the financial crisis: what’s going on? - This article investigates the recent trends in FDIs, focussing on the effects provoked by the financial crisis. The crisis has impacted in a significant manner on the more volatile component of FDIs, i.e. cross-border M&As. On the contrary, forecasts for greenfield FDIs are just in line with the decline expected in world export, after a strong increase registered in 2008. With the possibility that the financial crisis could catalyse a trend toward the so called "reverse globalization", the paper argues that there is evidence of an increasing heterogeneity in firms’ behaviour, with some firms now considering whether or not to scale back offshoring production by returning operations to, or closer to, home. Nevertheless, there is no evidence, or at least not yet, that we are witnessing a major shift in the direction and dynamics of international delocalisation processes.

Keywords: foreign direct investments, multinational firms

Parole chiave: investimenti diretti esteri, imprese multinazionali

Jel Classification: F23

The evolution of Italian multinational firms and the emergence of fourth capitalism - The purpose of this article is to outline the evolution of Italian multinational firms during the 2001-2007 period. The descriptive statistics show that a selected group of medium-sized firms has outperformed the other Italian multinationals in terms of growth rate. The evidence is consistent with the hypothesis of the emergence in Italy of the so-called "fourth capitalism", as an alternative successful model to both the industrial districts and the large chandlerian corporations. Some limits of this structural evolution are also discussed.

Keywords: foreign direct investments (FDIs), Italian multinational firms

Parole chiave: investimenti diretti esteri (IDE), imprese multinazionali italiane

Jel Classification: F23

L’analisi del Quinto Rapporto dell’Osservatorio Enea sull’Italia nella competizione tecnologica internazionale rileva uno scenario competitivo che è non solo più ampio, ma anche più complesso. Diversamente dai maggiori paesi europei, l’Italia continua a registrare un arretramento della propria competitività tecnologica, con una quota sulle esportazioni mondiali di prodotti high-tech che nel biennio 2003-2004 scende sotto al 2%. In significativa contro tendenza, il Paese accentua le preesistenti debolezze strutturali del suo sistema produttivo, orientato all’acquisizione piuttosto che all’autonoma progettazione di innovazione, con effetti diffusi, anche a livello territoriale, in termini di perdita di competitività di tutta l’industria manifatturiera, ultimamente segnata dall’emergere di deficit commerciali con i partner dell’UE (15), particolarmente intensi nei settori ad alta tecnologia.