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Domestic and Foreign Logistics Firms. How Heterogeneity Affects Firm Performance

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Book cover Transport and Logistics in a Globalizing World

Part of the book series: SpringerBriefs in Applied Sciences and Technology ((BRIEFSPOLIMI))

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Abstract

Foreign multinational enterprises (FMNEs) perform better than domestic uni-national (DOM) firms for a number of performance indicators and international firms tend to be larger, more likely to adopt new technologies, achieve higher productivity, and pay higher wages than domestic firms. Studies on firm heterogeneity by ownership mainly refer to the manufacturing sector, while little evidence is provided for other sectors, and specifically transport and logistics. After a literature review on the studies on manufacturing, the present chapter focuses on the transport and logistics industry, investigating whether and to what extent firm heterogeneity by ownership affects firm performance in Italy in 2002–2005. The results show that FMNEs are larger-sized, show a higher returns on capital, are more efficient, and, therefore, are more profitable than their domestic (DOM) counterparts. Besides, they are less willing to invest in premises than DOM firms because they may be ‘footloose’, thus investing in the short run.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Broadly, one can measure corporate performance by variables relating to productivity, profitability, growth or, even, customers’ satisfaction (Barbosa and Louri 2005).

  2. 2.

    Around 20 % of total exports are due to intermediate inputs being used for further processing (Hummels et al. 2001).

  3. 3.

    Crinò and Onida (2007) analyze the effects of foreign participation on the economic performance in Lombardy of both manufacturing and service industries.

  4. 4.

    The data come from AIDA (Analisi Informatizzata Delle Aziende), a large database administered by Bureau Van Dick, and REPRINT database , administered by Politecnico di Milano.

  5. 5.

    See Appendix for a detailed description of the database.

  6. 6.

    Amadeus is a pan-European financial database (7 million companies), which contains financial information on European companies and is updated very frequently. Amadeus comprises information on Italian logistics firms as well.

  7. 7.

    For a detailed description of the method see Brouwer and Mariotti (2009a, 2014).

  8. 8.

    This is the case of the third-party logistics provider (3PL ), a firm which provides outsourced (“third party”) logistics services to companies for part, or sometimes all of their supply chain management function.

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  1. Department of Architecture and Urban Studies—DAStU, Politecnico di Milano, Milan, Italy

    Ilaria Mariotti

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Mariotti, I. (2015). Domestic and Foreign Logistics Firms. How Heterogeneity Affects Firm Performance. In: Transport and Logistics in a Globalizing World. SpringerBriefs in Applied Sciences and Technology(). Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-00011-4_4

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