This book, a collaborative effort by researchers from Japan, Italy and the USA, seeks to explore the reasons for industrial clustering in certain regions of Asia, Europe and North America. The studies presented illustrate real examples of industrial clusters, adding anecdotal evidence to the...

Entrepreneurship has been among the key driving forces of the emergence of a dynamic private sector during the recent decades in Vietnam. This paper addresses for Vietnam the questions “how capital constraints affect the performance of family firms” and “how entrepreneurs’ human and...

According to Gibrat’s Law of Proportionate Effect, the growth rate of a given firm is independent of its size at the beginning of the period examined. While earlier studies tended to confirm the Law, more recent research generally rejects it. This paper reconciles these two streams of...

This paper analyses the impact of subsidies for the promotion of Italian joint ventures (JVs) aimed at LDC and transition economies. The empirical analysis is carried out on a unique dataset of 172 JVs interviewed during 1998 by means of a closed-answer qualitative-quantitative questionnaire....

Innovating firms use their finance structure as a signalling device to attract outside investors. This argument is developed in standard static principal-agent models dealing with New Technology Based Firms (NTBFs) and large firms undertaking an aggressive R&D strategy. In the case of NTBFs, the...

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...

As a specific institution of distributive trades, e-commerce displays similarities with retail stores and mail order companies. As well as providing theoretical support for the assumption that e-commerce is a way to sell certain goods and services at prices potentially lower than those of...