On the last decades, European countries have increased their focus on local production systems as a matter of industrial policy measures. Based on the works related to industrial districts of Becatini (1989), Brusco (1990), Ybarra (1991 and 1996) and Dei Ottati (1994), or the later contributions...

The present paper analyses whether and how the affiliation of a firm to a business group affects its productivity. Based on novel data consisting of official firm data from the German Business Register including ownership information from Bureau van Dijk's MARKUS database and from the Cost...