This paper investigates some crucial aspects of the recent development of industrial districts in the Emilia-Romagna region of Italy, where this type of spatial agglomeration of industrial firms has flourished since the period immediately after the Second World War. In particular, it is aimed at...

According to Gibrat' Law of Proportionate Effect, the growth rate of a given firm is independent of its size at the beginning of the period examined. In contrast to the previous literature on the subject, this paper seeks to test the Law by taking account of both the entry process and the role...

Recent empirical literature has introduced the "kill Biased Organizational Change" hypothesis, according to which organizational change can be considered as one of the main causes of the skill bias (increase in the number of highly skiled workers) exhibited by manufacturing employment in...

In this paper we integrate the insights of the Knowledge Spillover Theory of Entrepreneurship and Innovation (KSTE+I) with Schumpeter's idea that innovative entrepreneurs creatively apply available local knowledge, possibly mediated by Marshallian, Jacobian and Porter spillovers. In more detail,...

Recent empirical literature has introduced the "kill Biased Organizational Change" hypothesis, according to which organizational change can be considered as one of the main causes of the skill bias (increase in the number of highly skiled workers) exhibited by manufacturing employment in...

According to Gibrat' Law of Proportionate Effect, the growth rate of a given firm is independent of its size at the beginning of the period examined. In contrast to the previous literature on the subject, this paper seeks to test the Law by taking account of both the entry process and the role...

This paper investigates some crucial aspects of the recent development of industrial districts in the Emilia-Romagna region of Italy, where this type of spatial agglomeration of industrial firms has flourished since the period immediately after the Second World War. In particular, it is aimed at...

Previous empirical literature has shown that technological change can be considered the main cause of the skill bias (increase in the number of highly skilled workers) exhibited by manufacturing employment in developed countries over the last decades. However, recent papers have also introduced...

The aim of this paper is to test whether patent-based indicators are still reliable measures of innovativeness in light of organizational changes in the field of Intellectual Property Rights (IPR) protection and the regulatory reforms already under way respectively at the U.S. Patent and...

This survey paper aims at critically discussing the recent literature on firm formation and survival and the growth of new-born firms. The basic purpose is to single out the microeconomic entrepreneurial foundations of industrial dynamics (entry and exit) and to characterise the founder's...