Cristiana Donati

Firm growth and liquidity constraints: evidence from the manufacturing and service sectors in Italy

ABSTRACT We use a large firm-level panel data set to analyse the relevance of liquidity constraints on firm growth in Italy. In most European countries, mainstream financial institutions are scantly able to provide affordable credit facilities to small firms. Thus, these firms are forced to finance their growth almost exclusively through retained earnings. We estimate a dynamic version of Gibrat-law, incorporating cash flow as a measure of financial constraints, for two different size classes within small and medium size enterprises and for several industries in manufacturing and service sectors. The findings show that, in general, small manufacturing firms have higher growth-cash flow sensitivities with respect to medium firms. Conversely, our results highlight, for the services, a significant heterogeneity in the impact of liquidity constraints on firm growth. In particular, the sensitivity of growth rates to the cash flow appears relatively high for small firms belonging to Knowledge Intensive Business Services. Validation of Gibrat-law in the services suggests that an important group of industries, with a superior capacity of encouraging firm’s competitiveness, need more financial resources to promote their growth and that of the manufacturing sectors with whom they are connected.

Agglomeration Economies and Employment Growth in Italy

Using local labor systems (LLSs) data, we assess the effect of the local productive structure on employment growth in Italy during the period 1981–2008. Italy represents an interesting case study because of the high degree of spatial heterogeneity in local labor market performances and of the presence of strongly specialized LLSs (industrial districts). Building on semi-parametric geoadditive models, our empirical investigation allows us to identify important nonlinearities in the relationship between local industry structure and local employment growth to assess the relative performance of industrial districts and to control for unobserved spatial heterogeneity.

Service industries, growth dynamics and financial constraints

ABSTRACT This work represents a first attempt to study the effects of financial constraints on firm growth within the business services as it can be argued that firms are different not only in terms of size but also in the way they operate in a specific industry. Thus, firms can be either characterized by the use of intensive professional knowledge or, alternatively, by the use of a workforce with no specific professional skills. For the business services included, the results reveal the relative importance of internal sources of financing with respect to the external ones. The liquidity constraints mainly affect the growth of industries requiring qualified labor pool, such as computer programming and information service activities, as well as the professional and scientific ones. In these sectors, foremost operate small firms with a superior innovation capacity; therefore, they are considered risky and face difficulties in raising debt capital on favorable terms.

Dinamiche dell’occupazione e struttura produttiva locale in Italia

Utilizzando dati censuari a livello di Sistema Locale del Lavoro, analizziamo l’effetto della struttura produttiva locale sulla crescita dell’occupazione in Italia durante il periodo 1981- 2008. L’Italia rappresenta un caso di studio interessante data l’elevata eterogeneita spaziale nelle performance del mercato del lavoro e la forte presenza di distretti industriali, aree altamente specializzate in cui le economie Marshalliane tendono ad amplificarsi. L’analisi empirica, condotta attraverso l’uso di modelli semiparametrici geoadditivi, consente di identificare importanti non linearita nella relazione tra la struttura produttiva locale e la crescita dell’occupazione, di verificare la performance relativa dei distretti industriali e di controllare l’effetto dell’eterogeneita spaziale non osservata.

The impact of ICT on productivity of Italian firms: evaluation of the micro-complementarity hypothesis

The seminal work of Milgrom and Roberts (1990) established that interactions between factors such as Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs), organization and human capital entail a complementary relationship between these inputs; from such interactions, firms are able to exploit productivity gains arising from ICT investment. The empirical analysis is conducted on a panel of Italian manufacturing firms covering the period 2001–2006. The application of a suited System Generalized Method of Moments (SYS-GMM) estimator shows that for firms engaging ICT there exists a more coherent relationship between pair inputs and also among all three inputs considered.

L’adozione delle ICT e l’ipotesi di complementarità nelle imprese italiane

L’adozione delle ICT e l’ipotesi di complementarita nelle imprese italiane Il lavoro s’inserisce nel filone di studi che analizza le precondizioni che garantiscono agli investimenti in ICT di avere un impatto positivo sulla performance economica delle imprese valutando se gli input considerati, ossia ICT, cambiamenti organizzativi e formazione della forza lavoro siano legati da un rapporto di complementarita. L’analisi empirica e condotta su un panel chiuso di imprese manifatturiere italiane considerate nel periodo 2001-2006. I risultati ottenuti tramite due diversi metodi di stima evidenziano che l’interazione tra ICT, mutamento organizzativo e formazione della forza lavoro esercita un effetto positivo sulla produttivita del lavoro; tale risultato e confermato in entrambe le stime, solo per il sottocampione di imprese che ha coinvolto parte dei propri occupati in corsi di formazione.

Progresso tecnico, crescita e declino economico in una prospettiva post-keynesiana

Technological Change, Growth and Decline in a Post-Keynesian Perspective - The role of technological change has been investigated in New Growth Theory as in post-keynesian models. In the first approach technological change comes from optimizing behaviour of the agents and, following the growth accounting method, it can be calculated as Solow residual. The modern version of Solow residual is total factor productivity (tfp). Using tfp means to believe that all countries (advanced and less advanced) are on the same production function and that there aren’t any market constraints to growth. An alternative tool, discussed in the paper, to explain differences in economic performances is the augmented technical progress function (atpf). The atpf allows us to account for market constraints that could bite log before supply constraints become operative.

Competitiveness and economic performance of Southern Italy's SMEs in the first half of the last decade

The system of industrial production in the South of Italy has to cope with problems connected with both the persisting economic gap with the other parts of the Country and with a competitive crisis which, at the beginning of the new millennium, has involved the Italian productive system as a whole. The analysis carried out on sample and regional data has allowed us to focus on the economic performance and the most important dynamics affecting small and medium-sized enterprises in the South of Italy over the first half of the last decade. We found a situation marked by a real economic stagnation, in which some weak signals of reaction come from a limited group of smaller enterprises, exploiting the advantages deriving from a more flexible use of labour and from new foreign channels of trade, where competitive pressure is in fact less high.