Paper to be presented at the DRUID Summer Conference 2004 on INDUSTRIAL DYNAMICS, INNOVATION AND DEVELOPMENT Elsinore, Denmark, June 14-16, 2004 Theme: Networks, Clusters and other inter-firm relations as Vehicles for Knowledge Building and Transfer. THE ROLE OF MULTINATIONAL FIRMS IN THE EVOLUTION OF THE SOFTWARE INDUSTRY IN INDIA, IRELAND AND ISRAEL Marco Giarratana Depart. de Economia de la Impresa, Universidad Carlos III, Madrid, Spain, email: marco.giarratana@uc3m.es Alessandro Pagano Facoltà di Economia, Università degli Studi di Urbino “Carlo Bo”, Urbino, Italy, email: alex@sssup.it Salvatore Torrisi Corresponding author: Dipartimento di Scienze Giuridiche e Politiche, Università di Camerino, Palazzo Ducale, Piazza Cavour, 19, 62032 Camerino (MC), Italy, Tel.:++39-0737-403070; Fax: ++39-0737-403057; email: svtorrisi@libero.it. 29 April 2004 Abstract This paper analyzes the role of multinational corporations (MNCs) in the growth of the software industry in three emerging economies - India, Ireland and Israel. The paper examines the evolution of MNCs’ activities over time and their linkages with domestic software firms, by drawing on different sources of data The empirical analysis leads to two final conclusions. First, it shows that the role of MNCs varies considerably across these three countries. The second final conclusion is that the overall impact of MNCs on the development to the domestic software industry in the three examples analysed appears to be quite controversial. Keywords: Multinational Firms, Software, Technological Innovation, Regional Growth JEL Classification: F23, L86, O3, R12