In the present paper the following hypotheses have been tested: 1. pressure groups have a marginal role in fragmented industries. In fact, fragmented industries are characterised by the presence of many small firms and by self-centred entrepreneurs, prone more to conflicting than to co-operative...

The hypothesis underlined in this paper is that apart from infant mortality there is another relevant phenomenon taking place within new-born Small Business Enterprises (SBEs) in the period immediately after entry; namely that the smaller ones among them, having entered with a marked sub-optimal...

This paper carries out an empirical assessment of the relationship between social capital and labour productivity in small and medium enterprises in Italy. By means of structural equations models, the analysis investigates the effect of different aspects of the multifaceted concept of social...

The determinants of corporate failure in Italian, Spanish and French small and medium-sized enterprises are investigated in order to find out whether the predictors of financial distress in the countries are the same or not. In order to compare the determinants of financial distress,...

We study the effects of the reform of the system of severance payments (TFR) of Italian employees on the cost and the access to credit for small and medium-size enterprises (SMEs). The most direct consequence of the reform is to reduce in the long run the amount of liquid assets available to...

We examine the relationship between the number of bank relationships and firms’ performance, evaluating possible differential effects related to firms’ size. Our sample of firms from Italy includes many small firms, 99 percent of which are not listed and for which bank debt is a major source...