Andrea Lasagni
Università degli Studi di Parma (Italy), Economia, Faculty Member
ABSTRACT This paper uses Local Labour Market Areas (LLMA) data to investigate the dynamics of employment in the Information Technology (IT) sector in Italy 2001-2005. Adopting the framework suggested by Glaeser et al. (1992) and Combes... more
ABSTRACT This paper uses Local Labour Market Areas (LLMA) data to investigate the dynamics of employment in the Information Technology (IT) sector in Italy 2001-2005. Adopting the framework suggested by Glaeser et al. (1992) and Combes (2000), the aim is to test if agglomeration forces might significantly affect IT local growth. The basic OLS results are broadly consistent with those of earlier studies. In particular, IT employment growth is enhanced by industrial diversity (Jacobs externalities) and by plant size (economies of scale). At the same time, LLMAs with higher IT concentration are associated with lower employment growth rates. As a robustness check, quantile regression analysis is performed. This additional set of results reaveals that the role of agglomeration forces is different across IT growth levels.
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ABSTRACT Few firms grow rapidly, but their contribution to employment growth is often impressive. The main purpose of this paper is to analyse both the external and internal factors that can affect the probability of being a high-growth... more
ABSTRACT Few firms grow rapidly, but their contribution to employment growth is often impressive. The main purpose of this paper is to analyse both the external and internal factors that can affect the probability of being a high-growth firm (HGF) in Italy. We found that HGFs are, on average, young firms and are present in different industries, but the role of demand is important to understanding their performance at the sectoral level. Moreover, our findings show that financial constraints and profitability are not associated with the probability of being a HGF. HGFs, on average, are characterised by high productivity, but only when growth is measured in terms of sales. The most original results of this study concern the endogenous determinants of rapid growth, which have yet to be adequately examined in the literature. First, we found that the concentration of ownership is important for HGFs that experienced rapid growth in their sales. Second, the quality of human capital is a strong point for firms experiencing rapid employment growth.
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In contrast to the so-called cleansing effect, during the Great Recession we observe highly heterogeneous firm performances. In particular, a not negligible subset of firms grew considerably despite of the general tendency towards... more
In contrast to the so-called cleansing effect, during the Great Recession we observe highly heterogeneous firm performances. In particular, a not negligible subset of firms grew considerably despite of the general tendency towards downsizing. In this paper, we explain the behaviour of these swimming upstream firms (SUFs). We obtain three main results. First, SUFs exhibit certain firm-specific characteristics: they are younger and relatively more productive than non-SUFs. Second, SUFs adopt highly proactive strategic profiles, which assign significant importance to activities related to innovation, intangibles, and internationalization. Third, SUFs tend to react to changes in market opportunities, although they suffer from sticky processes of resource reallocation between exiting and surviving firms. Moreover, their growth seems to take place primarily within a regime of cumulative destruction rather than creative destruction. Some of the implications of these results for managers and policy makers are discussed.
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Il divario nel livello di sviluppo economico fra i paesi del mondo (tradizionalmente misurato dal livello del prodotto reale per addetto) e' aumentato in modo significativo a partire dagli anni '70. Questo lavoro, attraverso un... more
Il divario nel livello di sviluppo economico fra i paesi del mondo (tradizionalmente misurato dal livello del prodotto reale per addetto) e' aumentato in modo significativo a partire dagli anni '70. Questo lavoro, attraverso un esercizio di development accounting, metodologia ispirata al tradizionale approccio di contabilità della crescita, analizza l'importanza relativa dell'accumulazione di fattori produttivi e della componente 'residuale' (valutata