The hypothesis underlined in this paper is that apart from infant mortality there is another relevant phenomenon taking place within new-born Small Business Enterprises (SBEs) in the period immediately after entry; namely that the smaller ones among them, having entered with a marked sub-optimal...

Many empirical studies have shown how technological change, organisational change and globalisation can be alternatively (or jointly) seen as causes of skill bias. In this paper, after discussing some evidence on the G7 countries which shows a clear upskilling trend in manufacturing industries...

In this study three possible determinants of the increase in the ratio between skilled and unskilled workers are tested together: R&D, organisational change, and foreign direct investment. After analysing the literature, these hypotheses are jointly tested using a SUR estimate. The results -...

The recent emergence in the industrial organization literature of a wave of studies identifying small firms as being at least as innovative as their larger counterparts poses something of a paradox. Where do small firms get their knowledge generating inputs? The purpose of this paper is to link...

Consistently with previous evidence of the microeconomic literature on the subject and applying GMM-SYS on a unique Italian panel dataset, this study finds a significant - although small in size - positive relationship between innovation and employment at the firm's level in the 1990s.

Summary We use a dynamic specification to estimate the impact of trade on within-country income inequality in a sample of 65 developing countries (DCs) over the 1980-99 period. Our results suggest that trade with high income countries worsen income distribution in DCs, through both imports and...

In this study three possible determinants of the increased demand for skilled workers are tested using a panel of 412 Italian manufacturing firms over the period 1989-1997. The results suggest the statistical significance of the impact of organisational change, while they tend to exclude the...

Using a panel of 211 Italian manufacturing firms for 1995-2001 and the Least Squares Dummy Variable Corrected (LSDVC) estimator recently discussed in the econometric literature, it is shown that demand-pull innovation is particularly significant in liquidity-constrained companies in both the...