报告摘要：

　　Literature on the internationalization strategies of Multinational Enterprises (MNEs) has so far been built on the idea that such firms invest overseas on the basis of the possession of a superior set of assets compared to domestic firms. So far, this literature has mainly focused on the role of developed countries MNEs and no such analysis has been done to check the provision of the existing theories on the group of so‐called Emerging Multinationals (EMNEs).

　　Based on a large dataset on foreign affiliates in Europe, this paper aims at measuring the differences in terms of total factor productivity (TFP) and other indicators of competitiveness of EMNEs from the BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa) against their counterparts from developed countries and domestic MNEs. This is done by using different approaches, including cross company regressions, quantile analysis and semiparametric tests based on propensity score matching and differenceindifference estimators. If, as suggested by the literature, the early internationalization strategies of EMNEs are driven by assetexploration strategies we expect to find significant differences in their performance, especially when investing in more developed markets.

　　Indeed, preliminary results show that EMNEs investing in Europe are still at the bottom of the productivity ladder, recording a productivity gap with more established competitors, including domestic MNEs, especially in higher technology intensive sectors within the manufacturing, the results proving consistent to the adoption of different indicators and to different levels of disaggregation.