The literature on immigrant entrepreneurship has richly described the characteristics and peculiarities of ethnic businesses catering to enclave markets. However, several indications suggest that immigrant-owned firms are increasingly entering mainstream markets and changing both their internal...

A fronte di un netto calo del tasso di natalità delle imprese fondate da italiani, il numero di nuove imprese gestite da immigrati in Italia è in costante crescita. Oggi le imprese etniche sono in grado di fornire nuove tipologie di servizi e di estendere la varietà dei prodotti disponibili,...

This paper aims at contributing to the debate on the determinants of differentials in firms’ productivity. The case of Italy looks particularly interesting, since it is characterized by a substantial and long-lasting productivity gap of industrial firms located in the Southern regions with...

We study the adoption of different intangible investment strategies in manufacturing firms. Contrary to most of the previous literature, we find such strategies to be highly differentiated. In particular we identify three types of investment behaviour: high and persistent, low and persistent,...

Indonesia has a rich historical tradition of mutual cooperation at the community level. This study argues that rotating savings and credit associations (ROSCAs) constitute successful experiences of collective action within the informal financial sector. Therefore, using data from Indonesia...

The positive impact of intangible assets on several measures of economic performance is well documented in the literature. Less clear is what leads firms to invest in intangible assets in the first place. The latter is particularly important since, at least for the Italian manufacturing sector,...

This work is aimed to investigate factors affecting the decision to remit and to study the motives to employ remittances for investment purposes. To contribute to the discussion on these issues, we decided to integrate the current interpretative framework with new variables which are able to...

Few firms grow in a rapid way, but their contribution to employment growth is often impressive. The main purpose of this paper is to analyze both external and internal factors which can affect the probability of being a high-growth firm (HGF) in Italy. We found that HGFs are on average young...

Tertiary education attainment of italian labour force, particularly in the manufacturing industry, shows empirically a large gap with respect to the other OECD countries, although human capital growth has been increasingly addressed as one of the main channel towards productivity, competitive...