The Nissan Chair for Corporate Strategy and International Competitiveness has conducted research in the following areas:

1. The process of globalization.  The local origins of international competitiveness.
2. Competitiveness and profitability in the Spanish financial sector.  The impact of information technology in general, and of the Internet in particular, on the financial services sector.
3. Integration in processes of mergers and acquisitions.

Other projects have focused on the analysis of competitiveness by sectors, States, and regions.

The Nissan Chair of Corporate Strategy and International Competitiveness is currently in the process of appointing a new chair to replace Eduardo Ballarín, the previous chair holder since 1990, who passed away on April 27, 2009, at the age of 62.

The Nissan Chair for Corporate Strategy and International Competitiveness directs the MBA course, The Microeconomics of Competitiveness:  Firms, Clusters, and Economic Development. This program, created by Harvard Business School (HBS) Prof. Michael E. Porter, is offered simultaneously in more than 30 business schools all over the world, by way of a technological platform that connects HBS with the other business schools.

The course explores the causes of competitiveness and economic development from a microeconomic perspective. Like macroeconomic policies, the stability of political and legal systems and investment in human and physical capital create huge potential for competitiveness, and wealth is truly generated at the microeconomic level. The cases discussed demonstrate how the ultimate causes of productivity for a given region or country are the sophistication and productivity of businesses, the strength of clusters and the quality of the business environment in which one competes.

In the 2001-2002 school year, the Chair became, along with the Anselmo Rubiralta Center for Globalization and Strategy, the Spanish member of the Annual Report of The World Economic Forum, Global Competitiveness Report . The study uses two complementary approaches to analyze competitiveness: the perspectives of growth and the macroeconomic conditions of more than 100 countries.