The Happy Few: The Internationalisation of European Firms

Abstract

Policymakers tend to view the internationalisation of firms from the perspective of export, import and FDI statistics. A lack of statistical information at the firm level has so far prevented the systematic inclusion of firm-level analysis in the policymaker's standard toolbox. Some firm-level datasets are now available, however, and their analysis reveals some new facts that are simply unobservable at the aggregate level.