Suchergebnisse

International engagement is often expected to improve firm performance. Especially for small technology-oriented firms, export activities may be important, being regarded as one way to amortise these firms' high product research and development costs. This paper examines the relationship between international business activities and firm performance using a sample of about 200 young high-tech firms in Germany and the UK that were contacted by two surveys in 1997 and 2003. I find out that the performance enhancing effects of internationalisation that were still observed in 1997 are in fact restricted to an early stage of the firms' life cycles and disappear when technology-oriented firms become mature. The results are in line with many other studies: Firms exhibiting superior performance are or will become exporters.

The study empirically examines the long-term export behaviour of about 200 young technology-oriented companies from Germany and the UK. These firms were contacted by means of two surveys, in 1997 and 2003. In this study, three dimensions of firms' international engagements are examined econometrically: foreign market entry and exit, degree of internationalisation (i.e., export-sales ratio), and the change of sales modes in international markets. Moreover, the causal relationship between a firm's status of internationalisation and its performance (measured by the firm's labour productivity as well as its employment and sales growth rates) is analysed.

This article estimates a dynamic structural model of discrete Research and Development (R&D) investment and quantifies its cost and long‐run benefit for German manufacturing firms. The model incorporates linkages between R&D choice, product and process innovations, and future productivity and profits. The long‐run payoff to R&D is the proportional difference in expected firm value generated by the investment. It increases firm value by 6.7% for the median firm in high‐tech industries but only 2.8% in low‐tech industries. Simulations show that reductions in maintenance costs of innovation significantly raise investment rates and productivity, whereas reductions in startup costs have little effect.