Sectoral and territorial specificities affect the firm’s capabilities of being productive. While there is a wide consensus on this, a quantitative measure of the these effects has been lacking. To this end, we combine a dataset of Italian firms with some meso regional and sectoral variables...

This study analyses how firms' internal variables and regional factors affect total factor productivity (TFP) of Italian manufacturing firms. Due to the hierarchical structure of our data, we employ a multilevel model that allows for a clear distinction between firm and region-specific effects....

Questo lavoro presenta un’analisi territoriale della produttività totale dei fattori (PTF) in Italia dal 1998 al 2006, utilizzando dati di impresa. L’aspetto territoriale è approfondito scomponendo la PTF negli effetti within-firms e between-firms, calcolati per l’intero campione e per...

The aim of this paper is to assess the effect on firm total factor productivity of the university research. Since the impact of universities on firms’ performance is subtle and complex, we verify whether territorial context, sector and firm size may influence this relationship. Results show...

Using Total Factor Productivity (TFP) as a measure of corporate performance, we find that Italian family-run firms are less productive than firms run by outside managers and the result is robust to potential endogeneity of management regime. This difference tends to vanish when the age of the...

The paper compares the export quality of Italy, Germany, Japan and China. The empirical analysis is based on export unit value for a sample of machinery products exported to the USA over the decade 1996-2006. The results point to four stylised facts. First, Italy, Germany and Japan are...

The paper compares the export quality of Italy, Germany, Japan and China. The empirical analysis is based on export unit value for a sample of machinery products exported to the USA over the decade 1996-2006. The results point to four stylised facts. First, Italy, Germany and Japan are...

This paper analyses the influence of universities on Italian firm TFP at the provincial level separating the effects of main university functions, such as the creation of knowledge through research, the creation of human capital through teaching and the technology transfer. Overall, results show...

This paper analyses the influence of universities on Italian firms’ probability to innovate. Using firm-level data, we focus on institutionalised technology transfer (TT) activities in universities, namely spin-offs, patents and research contracts. Results show that TT activities play a...

This paper analyses the TFP heterogeneity of a sample of manufacturing firms operating in seven EU countries (Austria, France, Germany, Hungary, Italy, Spain and UK). TFP data refer to 2008. The empirical setting is based on the multilevel modelling which provides two main results. Firstly, we...