The authors study the determinants of make or buy decisions for grapes made by wineries belonging to the Rioja Qualified Designation of Origin (DOCa). In particular, they analyze the relationship between product quality and vertical integration. Although there is a long tradition in transaction cost theory of analyzing the determinants of make or buy decisions in manufacturing, surprisingly few empirical studies have been conducted in the agriculture and food and beverage industry. Likewise, although quality is a key competitive variable in many food sectors, only a few studies have analyzed quality in their models. The authors find that transaction costs and product quality provide a useful explanation of vertical integration in the wine industry in the Rioja DOCa. Wineries that produce high-quality wines are more likely to integrate vertically than those producing low-quality wines. They also find that the size of the winery significantly affects make or buy choices. Implications are explored for managers facing a governance mode choice. [EconLit Classifications: L220, Q130]. © 2009 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

where he teaches courses related to business and management in undergraduate and postgraduate programs. He has published his research in journals such as Journal of International Management and Applied Economic Letters, among others.

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This paper analyzes the effects of foreign direct investment on technical progress in Spanish manufacturing. Particularly, we study how foreign direct investment (FDI)'s contributions vary depending on the economic structure of the industry. The results show that most FDI goes to capital-intensive sectors, especially when those sectors are also research and development (R&D)-intensive. Our estimates of the Solow residual show that the positive effect of contemporaneous and lagged FDI on manufacturing productivity is only attributable to capital-and R&D-intensive industries in what seems to be related to a dynamic capabilities explanation or to complementarities with R&D expenditures.