How do firms combine different internationalisation modes? A multivariate probit approach

Most of the literature on the relationship between firm’s participation in international markets and firm heterogeneity focuses on export and foreign direct investment. This paper considers a wider range of forms of internationalisation that firms could combine into different patterns. With the purpose of analysing the selection of heterogeneous firms into different internationalisation patterns, we jointly model the decisions on the forms of internationalisation through a multivariate probit. This model allows us to avoid any a priori assumption about the firm’s behaviour. In this context we study the complementarity/substitutability relationships between forms of internationalisation. The results obtained show that: i) neglecting some forms could lead to an incomplete representation about the firm’s internationalisation strategy, ii) different firm’s characteristics influence the choice of internationalisation pattern, i.e. some types of firm are more prone to choosing one type of process over another, iii) complementarity between forms of internationalisation seems to be preferred over substitution, but some heterogeneity also arises in this context.