Anna Maria Ferragina

Mind the Gap: Unemployment in the New EU Regions

The paper surveys the theoretical and empirical literature on regional unemployment during transition in Central and Eastern Europe. The focus is on Optimal Speed of Transition (OST) models and on comparison of them with the neoclassical tradition. In the typical neoclassical models, spatial differences essentially arise as a consequence of supply side constraints and institutional rigidities. Slow-growth, high-unemployment regions are those with backward economic structures and constraints on factors mobility contribute to making differences persistent. However, such explanations leave the question unanswered of how unemployment differences arise in the first place. Economic transition provides an excellent testing ground to answer this question. Prefiguring an empirical law, the OST literature finds that the high degree of labour turnover of high unemployment regions is associated with a high rate of industrial restructuring and, consequently, that low unemployment may be achieved by implementing transition more gradually. Moreover, international trade, FDI and various agglomeration factors help explain the success of capital cities compared to peripheral towns and rural areas in achieving low unemployment.

Regional Unemployment in the OST Literature

This paper surveys the now large body of theoretical and empirical literature on regional unemployment during transition in Central and Eastern Europe. The focus is on Optimal Speed of Transition models and on comparison of them with the neoclassical tradition. In the typical neoclassical models, spatial differences essentially arise as a consequence of supply side constraints and institutional rigidities. Slow-growth, high-unemployment regions are those with backward economic structures. Constraints on factors mobility contribute to making differences persistent. However, such explanations leave the question unanswered of how unemployment differences arise in the first place. Economic transition provides an excellent testing ground to answer this question. Prefiguring an empirical law, the high degree of labour turnover of high unemployment regions is associated with a high rate of industrial restructuring. The OST literature suggests, in fact, that low unemployment may be achieved by implementing transition more gradually. Moreover, international trade, FDI and various agglomeration factors help explain the success of capital cities compared to peripheral towns and rural areas in achieving low unemployment.

Does multinational ownership affect firm survival in Italy

The aim of this paper is to investigate whether and how multinational status and foreign ownership affect the survival of Italian manufacturing and service firms. To this end, we analyze firm survival by distinguishing Italian firms as foreign multinationals (FMNEs) domestic multinationals (DMNEs) or domestic non-multinational firms (NMNEs). The empirical analysis is based on the Kaplan-Meier survival estimator and on the Cox proportional hazard model, in which we look for the impact of ownership dummies on firm survival, controlling for several firm and industry specific covariates. Our findings reveal that manufacturing and service firms owned by foreign multinationals are more likely to exit the market than either DMNEs or NMNEs. Moreover, DMNEs show a higher chance of survival in services. By decomposing firm activities into different technological classes, we also find that foreign ownership still exerts a negative influence on firm survival in both static and dynamic industries, while domestic multinationals in less-knowledge-intensive services appear more persistent.

Italian FDI and Exports at sectoral level: substitutes or complements?

Abstract In this contribution we investigate upon the impact of the stocks of Italian outward FDI (in terms of employees of Italian foreign affiliates in the host markets and of the number of Italian foreign affiliates) on trade (national exports and imports). We employ a sector gravity analysis of Italian trade and FDI with the main partners to estimate a conditional correlation between domestic exports and foreign investment. To such a purpose we carry out a sectoral level analysis by aggregating data at firm level that allows a detailed analysis of the Italian FDI (ICE-Reprint). The sectoral panel we build on the basis of this firm level dataset includes 68 Italian host markets and 16 sectors during the 2001–2003 period. Our results do not confirm a substitution relationship of firm performances in terms of exports with respect to productive takeovers and employment in affiliates abroad.

Multinationality and Firm Survival: An Analysis of Italian Manufacturing Sector

The aim of this paper is to investigate whether and how the multinational status and foreign ownership affect the survival of Italian manufacturing firms. To this end, we carry out the analysis on firm survival distinguishing the Italian firms in foreign multinationals, domestic multinationals and domestic non-multinational firms. In the empirical analysis, carried out over the period 2004-2008 and based on the Cox proportional hazard model, we look for the impact of ownership dummies on firm survival controlling for several firm and industry specific covariates. Our findings reveal that manufacturing firms owned by foreign multinationals are more likely to exit from the market than both domestic multinationals and domestic non-multinational firms. However, when we split our sample according the degree of technological intensity, we found that the footloose nature of foreign multinationals is inherently stronger into the less dynamic industries.