De-Internationalisation Patterns in Hungary

The debate on firm internationalisation has predominantly focused on different aspects connected to growth. However, the notion of de-internationalisation is not as popular, although it could also contribute significantly to our understanding of internationalisation. This paper focuses on de-internationalisation, its different modes and patterns followed by companies in the Hungarian context. Three hypotheses are tested: that de-internationalisation is a mass phenomenon, after de-internationalisation most companies are terminated, and de-internationalisation does not mean the end of international exposure. To test these hypotheses the Hungarian Corporate Tax Database was used with which the whole population of Hungarian companies in the years from 2009 to 2014 was analysed. The database consists 385,723 companies in 2009 and 422,500 companies in 2014, which is the whole Hungarian private sector. Among these companies 73,442 companies were registering export revenues, but this seems to be stable only for a smaller amount of companies. De-internationalisation is uncovered in this paper with different patterns followed by companies in the Hungarian context.