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1. Sweet dreams are made of this… The success of Belgian chocolate exports

   Belgian chocolates are world famous. Together with Switzerland, Belgium is internationally known as the country of chocolates. Belgian chocolatiers win many international awards. Belgium is also the largest chocolate exporter in the world, exporting over 1 billion € of the sweet stuff every year. Based on very detailed export data in the period 1998-2010, researchers Filip Abraham, Zuzanna Studnicka and Jan Van Hove unravel the DNA of Belgian chocolate exporting firms and identify the factors that drive their export strategies.

2. Distance matters

   If General Motors’ headquarters had been in Belgium, Opel Antwerp would not have been closed. Or would it? Why are managers more reluctant to downsize nearby affiliates than distant ones? Vlerick Professor Filip Abraham, together with researchers at the KU Leuven, investigated whether decisions to downsize taken by multinationals are affected by the geographical distance between headquarters and subsidiaries. Their results were published in a paper entitled “Staying Home or Moving Away? Restructuring Efforts within Multinational Enterprises”.