This paper studies the impact of size on labor cost and productivity for Italian manufacturing firms. The distributions of both labor cost and productivity display a wide support, even when disaggregated by sector of industrial activity. Further, both labor cost and productivity, when considered...

The paper investigates R&D and ICT investment at firm level, assessing their relative importance and the extent to which they are complements or substitutes. We use data on a large unbalanced panel sample from four consecutive waves of a survey of Italian manufacturing firms, together with a...

This paper estimates the effect of international outsourcing of materials and services on productivity in Italian manufacturing sectors during the period 1985-1997. Three different measures of outsourcing are used. Firstly, a quot;narrowquot; measure of outsourcing is calculated as the intensity...

The paper explores the question whether the relationship between corporate governance and innovation is affected by the extent to which the firm is exposed to agency problems and asset specificity issues. In particular, we argue that different combinations of asset specificity and agency costs...

Many enterprises successful at home show their deficiencies abroad because they don't analyse their structure, their financial potential and their targets. The author, after considering some critical elements which may be considered the ingredients of “success abroad”, has focussed on the...

Many enterprises successful at home show their deficiencies abroad because they don't analyse their structure, their financial potential and their targets. The author, after considering some critical elements which may be considered the ingredients of “success abroad”, has focussed on the...

Sectoral and territorial specificities affect the firm's capabilities of being productive. While there is a wide consensus on this, a quantitative measure of the these effects has been lacking. To this end, we combine a data-set of Italian firms with some meso regional and sectoral variables and...