Innovativeness, offshoring and black economy decisions. Evidence from Italian manufacturing firms

Following recent models in international trade this paper examines the characteristics that businesses should possess to pursue internationalization strategies. We do this in the peculiar context of Italy, the G-7 country with the largest share of the black economy in GDP. Specifically, we posit that Italian manufacturing firms may use three strategies to counter the competitive threats by emerging economies: (i) improve the innovative content...