Businesses, Volume 4, Issue 3 (September 2024) – 3 articles

Despite the cross-border availability of almost all goods and services online due to global Internet access, the domestic origin of sellers remains significant. This study examines the preferences for domestic versus cross-border goods and services in online purchases in the EU online market from 2020 to 2023. We use quantitative methods including ordinary least squares (OLS), decision trees, and spatial autocorrelation analysis. We find significant effects of currency, language(s), and Internet use on domestic online purchases, while cross-border online purchases are further influenced by prices and urbanization. Our analysis reveals patterns based on the origin of the seller: domestic, intra-EU, or non-EU seller. There is a strong preference for electronic goods and services, regardless of the seller’s origin, while physical goods show a decreasing preference from domestic to intra-EU and non-EU sellers. Limited geographical effects and spatial patterns in online retailing were found, with a trend towards domestic localization. These differences in e-commerce by seller origin are primarily driven by country-specific characteristics (language(s), currencies) rather than geographic distance. The variation in the purchase of goods and services also depends on their physical and electronic form, that is, digital ordering and/or digital delivery. The expansion of e-commerce and the importance of country-specific characteristics require the development of standards to measure these influences. Full article

A symbiotic relationship exists between the state and the energy sector that often leads to conflicting relationships between the two. The best example of this complicated relationship is between the state and free markets is the case of the United States, European Union, and Global Energy Sector. The decline in the gas import—due to sanctions placed on the Russian Federation—to Europe from Russia, along with other counties that import gas from Russia, has negatively affected the economies of European counties. The Russian government has restructured the exporting of gas to other counties in order to continue to sustain companies’ growth. This literature review will analyze how sanctions against Russian Federation have affected the energy market and how it will affect entire energy markets. Full article

This paper covers the trend of cross-border mergers and acquisitions (M&As) of corporate control in Italy. The expansion of international acquisitions in the last decades changed the corporate structure of industries and business organizations. The common understanding regards the suspicious transfer of control of companies to a foreign owner. However, the reasons seem ungrounded, and the evidence is conflicting. This paper aims to disentangle this view and offer a more objective assessment. The research uses a dataset comprised of 446 cross-border deals of foreign companies targeting Italian business enterprises over the period 2005–2015 and their performance over the period 2013–2022. The case of Italy is of interest because of the number of foreign acquisitions in the years that comprised the great financial crisis (2007–2008) and the sovereign debt crisis (2010–2011). Foreigners’ takeover of Italian companies followed multiple strategies and produced international synergies. The article concludes with implications and considerations for further research. Full article