FIW Research Reports 2013/14 N° 4
Christian Zeller, Andreas Hametner, Koen Smet und Markus Seiwald

Abstract: Die vorliegende Studie untersucht die internationale Expansion der Pharmaindustrie in Österreich und stellt diese in den Kontext der zunehmenden weltwirtschaftlichen Verflech-tungen. Die Pharmaindustrie in Österreich besteht einerseits aus den Filialen einiger inter-national tätiger Großkonzerne und andererseits aus kleinen und mittelgroßen österrei-chischen Unternehmen, die bestimmte Nischenmärkte bearbeiten und nicht oder nur sehr selektiv international expandieren. Bedeutendes volkswirtschaftliches Gewicht haben vor allem einige wenige integrierte Pharmaunternehmen, die größere Produktionsstätten sowie Forschung und Entwicklung betreiben. Der österreichische Pharmamarkt wird vor allem von Vertriebsgesellschaften ausländischer Konzerne bearbeitet.

Keywords: Direktinvestitionen, FDI, Unternehmensstrategien, globale Warenketten, Pharmazeutische Industrie, Internationalisierung
JEL-codes: F21, F23, F60, F63, L20, L21, L22, L65

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FIW Research Reports 2013/14 N° 3
Stefan Ederer and Stefan Schiman

Abstract: Die vorliegende Analyse der österreichischen Warenverkehrsbilanz diskutiert sowohl die zeitliche Entwicklung der Handelsbilanz und ihre zugrundeliegenden Faktoren als auch die bilateralen Bilanzen mit den wichtigsten Handelspartnern und die Handelsbilanz in ausgewählten Warengruppen. Mit ökonometrischen Verfahren werden kurz- und langfristige Effekte identifiziert und die strukturelle Komponente der Handelsbilanz geschätzt. Zudem wird der Einfluss der Finanzmarkt- und Wirtschaftskrise auf die Warenverkehrsbilanz ermittelt. In einem internationalen Vergleich werden Parallelen und Unterschiede zur deutschen und zur Schweizer Handelsbilanz gezeigt.

Keywords: External balance, trade balance, foreign trade
JEL-codes: F14, F62

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FIW Research Reports 2013/14 N° 2
Robert Stehrer und Roman Stöllinger

Abstract: This study investigates Austria’s positions in international production sharing and global value chains exploiting the recently available Global Input-Output Database (WIOD). Researchers and policy-makers become increasingly aware of the fact that production processes are more and more organised internationally, which implies that indicators based e.g. on gross export values become less meaningful as part of this value is made of imported intermediates. As such, statistics and indicators based on a value added rather than gross trade basis and emphasis on the actual (domestic) value added creation due to exports are needed for policy-makers and researchers to draw a more accurate picture of the link between trade and value added creation and the implications thereof. Making use of indicators for measuring different aspects of complex production relations established in the literature such as the degree of vertical specialisation, value added trade and global value chain income, we find that Austria has intensified its participation in international production sharing since 1995 as evidenced, e.g., by the substantial increase in its vertical specialisation index. Tight supplier-customer relationships, above all in medium-high- and high-technology-intensive manufacturing industries, with Germany and increasingly with the neighbouring CEEC economies have contributed strongly to this development. However, international production sharing is also inextricably linked to ‘employment sharing’, meaning that in the presence of vertical specialisation not all jobs related to Austrian exports are also located in Austria. In fact, if based on the individual countries’ labour productivities, Austrian exports embody more foreign than domestic jobs due to significantly lower productivity levels in some of the partner countries. Nevertheless, the development of Austrian exports has been very dynamic over the past decade as manifested for example in a trade surplus since the early 2000s. A counterfactual exercise that compares the actual amount of domestic jobs embodied in Austrian exports with the hypothetical amount of jobs that would be needed to produce Austria’s imports domestically suggests that foreign trade has a positive employment impact in Austria amounting to some 90,000 jobs in 2009 – a result that is closely linked to Austria’s trade balance surplus. The strong export performance of Austria is also revealed by the rising share in total EU value added exports which exceeded 3% in 2011, though this is sometimes masked by the fact that the share in global value added exports declined slightly between 1995 and 2011 as a result of new important players in the arena of international trade, above all China. Finally, analysing the trade slump of the year 2009 we find that ‘re-shoring’ activities of Austrian firms as well as the so-called ‘composition effect’ contributed to the crisis-related decline of Austrian exports.

Keywords: production fragmentation, value added trade, internationalisation
JEL-codes: F14, F15, F63, O52

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FIW Research Reports 2013/14 N° 1
Bernhard Dachs and Bernd Ebersberger

Abstract: A strong innovation performance based on R&D, product development and the implementation of advanced production technologies is key for the long-term competitiveness of European economies. This study investigates the effects of production offshoring on R&D and innovation activities of the firm in the home country. The analysis is based on a dataset of more than 3000 manufacturing firms from seven European countries. We employ propensity score matching to compare R&D and innovation activities of firms which have offshored production activities in a previous period to a control group of non-offshoring firms.
The analysis finds no negative effect of production offshoring on innovation and technological capabilities of firms in the home country. On contrary, offshoring firms spend significantly more on R&D or product design, and invest more in process innovation than non-offshoring firms. These results support a view on internationalisation of firms that regards offshoring as a strategy of international expansion, and not a passive reaction of firms to a loss of their competitiveness. Our results indicate that this expansion goes hand in hand with innovation and process modernization at home.

Keywords: offshoring, innovation, R&D, home country effects, investment
JEL-codes: F230, F610, O310, O330

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