dc.contributor.author | ALTOMONTE, Carlo | |
dc.contributor.author | RUNGI, Armando | |
dc.date.accessioned | 2014-05-12T12:59:16Z | |
dc.date.available | 2014-05-12T12:59:16Z | |
dc.date.issued | 2014 | |
dc.identifier.issn | 1830-1541 | |
dc.identifier.uri | https://hdl.handle.net/1814/31367 | |
dc.description.abstract | The emergence of global supply chains, that is the organization of production processes in factories that are part of a network of suppliers located in different countries and specialized in specific production phases, brings about a number of major changes in the way the global economy works and interacts. To explore more in detail this phenomenon from a microeconomic perspective, in this paper we provide evidence on Business Groups, that is network-like forms of hierarchical organization between legally autonomous firms spanning both within and across national borders. Exploiting a unique dataset of 270,474 headquarters controlling more than 1,500,000 (domestic and foreign) affiliates in all countries worldwide, we find that business groups account for a significant part of value-added generation in both developed and developing countries, with a prevalence in the latter. In order to characterize their boundaries, we introduce an entropy-like metric able to summarize the hierarchical complexity of a group and its trade-off between exploitation of knowledge as an input across the hierarchy and the associated communication costs. When relating these metrics to the performance of affiliates across business groups, we find a robust (albeit non-linear) positive relationship between a group’s hierarchical complexity and productivity which dominates the already known correlation between vertical integration and productivity. Results are in line with the theoretical framework of knowledge-based hierarchies developed by the literature, in which intangible assets are a complementary input in the production processes. | en |
dc.format.mimetype | application/pdf | |
dc.language.iso | en | en |
dc.relation.ispartofseries | EUI RSCAS PP | en |
dc.relation.ispartofseries | 2014/04 | en |
dc.relation.ispartofseries | Global Governance Programme | en |
dc.relation.ispartofseries | Global Economics | en |
dc.rights | info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess | en |
dc.subject | Supply chains | en |
dc.subject | Hierarchies | en |
dc.subject | Business groups | en |
dc.subject | Property rights | en |
dc.subject | Organization of production | en |
dc.subject | Productivity | en |
dc.subject.other | Trade, investment and international cooperation | |
dc.title | Global supply chains and international competitiveness | en |
dc.type | Other | en |
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