Papers by Alessandro Arrighetti
The international journal of entrepreneurship and innovation, Jun 26, 2022
In most of the literature, immigrant-owned firms are perceived as being “different” from those ow... more In most of the literature, immigrant-owned firms are perceived as being “different” from those owned by natives. Some recent evidence suggests that this distinction is not always clear-cut. This paper aims to analyze the similarities and differences between immigrant-owned SMEs and native-owned firms by comparing the economic, financial, and organizational variables at the firm level. The research is based on a large database of partnerships and private limited companies (micro and very small enterprises are excluded). A matched-pair analysis was performed to assess the presence of significant differences between entrepreneurial ventures owned by immigrants and those owned by natives. This approach makes it possible to obtain a suitable sample for a “controlled” comparison between the firms in our sample. Unlike the previous results obtained for firm size, industry, and geography, we found that proxy values for efficiency, capital intensity, and profitability for immigrant-owned SMEs are not significantly different (or lower) from those owned by natives. Migrant ventures have demonstrated the ability to leverage bridging skills to enter foreign markets. In addition, more advanced migrant companies have narrowed the gap with native firms and show similar characteristics in terms of financial structure and performance.
Argomenti, 2017
Received literature describes ethnic firms as founded to meet the needs of an ethnic community an... more Received literature describes ethnic firms as founded to meet the needs of an ethnic community and use peculiar configurations of human and social capital drawing on ethnic resources. According to some authors, this is due to the "acculturation lag" that characterizes immigrant entrepreneurs retaining traditional values from the heritage culture. Recent evidence however shows that immigrant firms are undergoing significant changes in their organizational structures, such as the incorporation of native or non-co-ethnic partners or employees (i.e., firm ethnic hybridism). This study analyzes whether these changes are accompanied by different entrepreneurs' acculturation patterns. A unique set of primary data about 130 first-generation immigrant entrepreneurs in Italy is used to shed some new light on this topic and suggest avenues for future research.
Quaderni di economia del lavoro, Feb 1, 2021
Cambridge Journal of Economics, Feb 19, 2020
An extensive body of literature documents large and persistent within-industry heterogeneity of f... more An extensive body of literature documents large and persistent within-industry heterogeneity of firm performance. While some authors explain such evidence in terms of input misallocation, we provide an alternative analytical framework that integrates insights from resource-based and institutional approaches. We interpret firms’ behaviour as the result of the interaction among exogenous and endogenous factors. Exogenous factors, both supply and demand related, define the opportunity set that is available to firms. Endogenous factors reflect instead firm-specific interpretations of such set, which, combined with the available resources and capabilities, determine a firm’s strategic responses, which can be markedly heterogeneous. Whenever the diversity of firm conducts is associated with relatively small profit differentials, firm heterogeneity can persist. Evidence based on the evolution of labour productivity and profit dispersion in the Italian manufacturing sector between the 1990s and early 2000s provides support for our interpretative framework.
RePEc: Research Papers in Economics, Oct 16, 2015
The financial crisis has caused many business closures, especially in the periphery of the Europe... more The financial crisis has caused many business closures, especially in the periphery of the European Monetary Union. In this paper, we use original firm-level Italian data to explore the role of intangibles in limiting firm exit during the crisis. While intangibles strengthen firms' resilience, i.e. the ability to cope with unexpected shocks, they also entail sunk costs, which expose firms to greater financial risk. In the longer term, when access to external finance is critical for survival, we expect intangibles to play a positive role only if combined with a solid financial structure. Our results support these hypotheses: intangibles directly reduce the probability of firm exit during the initial phase of the crisis (before 2010). At later stages, the beneficial effect of intangible assets is conditional on the firm exhibiting a solid pre-crisis financial status. Managerial and policy implications are discussed.
RePEc: Research Papers in Economics, 2018
Recent works in the socioeconomic literature suggest the emergence of a predominant neoliberal mo... more Recent works in the socioeconomic literature suggest the emergence of a predominant neoliberal model of capitalism. A similar trend characterizes the management literature where competitive advantages are increasingly associated with integrated global engagement, a strategic paradigm leaning on complementarities among R&D, human capital and export/FDI. While both views imply growing institutional and strategic homologation, other studies show only partial convergence in institutional settings and considerable heterogeneity in managerial conducts. This paper explores these issues by comparing the characteristics of Italian and German manufacturing firms. Independently of the country, globally engaged firms are similar in firm-specific variables (size, age, innovation) that are usually associated with good economic performance, but remain highly differentiated in institutions-related variables. Firms not adopting a global engagement strategy are markedly heterogeneous in all dimensions. Global engagement pushes firms to become more similar across countries, but the variety of institutional settings continues to affect the evolution of business.
RePEc: Research Papers in Economics, 2018
A matched-pair analysis was performed to verify the existence or not of significant differences b... more A matched-pair analysis was performed to verify the existence or not of significant differences between native and migrant companies regarding firmspecific variables and the governance structure. Controlling for firm size, industry and geographical location, we found that proxy values for efficiency, capital intensity of production and services and profitability are not significantly different (or not lower) than those of native-owned small business. Evidence shows that previous studies concerning the diversity of immigrant-owned businesses are likely marked biased by methodological choices that did not take account of the concentration of these companies in "disadvantaged" firm size categories, industries or geographical locations.
RePEc: Research Papers in Economics, 2018
Negli ultimi decenni l’insegnamento dell’economia industriale e stato sottoposto a notevoli tensi... more Negli ultimi decenni l’insegnamento dell’economia industriale e stato sottoposto a notevoli tensioni. Le novita che si sono affermate rendono necessaria una riflessione sui contenuti sviluppati e sulle metodologie adottate. Una recente indagine, rivolta ai docenti di economia industriale e di materie ‘affini’ che insegnano nelle universita italiane, consente di approfondire alcuni aspetti del cambiamento in corso. I risultati mostrano che a) l’insegnamento dell’economia industriale ha seguito sentieri evolutivi diversificati e con marcate connotazioni specialistiche; b) sembra ridursi il nucleo tematico condiviso nei diversi corsi; c) sono state sperimentate in modo diffuso pratiche didattiche innovative, ma rimangono aperti spazi per ulteriori miglioramenti, in particolare nella didattica con strumenti web e nei metodi di coinvolgimento attivo degli studenti.
Industrial and Corporate Change, Jun 21, 2021
In the last decades, work flexibility emerged as a key requirement firms must meet to face volati... more In the last decades, work flexibility emerged as a key requirement firms must meet to face volatile markets and highly differentiated product demand. This article compares two alternative approaches to strengthen work flexibility: internal flexibility, that is, practices that focus on the employees’ ability to perform a variety of highly qualified tasks in a context of stable employment relationships; and external flexibility, that is, practices that align employment and labor costs to demand fluctuations using a buffer of nonstandard employees involved in routine tasks. We empirically verify whether both practices are able to boost sales growth using a linked employer-employee panel of manufacturing firms from the Emilia-Romagna region (Italy). While internal flexibility positively affects firm growth, external flexibility is at best not significant, and in some empirical specifications, it appears to hamper firm growth. Such a negative effect, however, decreases when we limit the analysis to industries with high demand volatility and cost-based competition. The related managerial and policy implications are discussed.
Recent works in the socio-economic and comparative political economy literature suggest the emerg... more Recent works in the socio-economic and comparative political economy literature suggest the emergence of a predominant neoliberal model of capitalism, which is gradually being adopted by most advanced countries. A similar trend is present in the management literature where competitive advantages are increasingly being associated with a predominant strategic paradigm (integrated global engagement) leaning on the complementarities among RD b) firms that have not adopted a strategy of global engagement are markedly heterogeneous in terms of both structural characteristics and institutions-related variables. In other words, global engagement is associated with a lower degree of the differentiation between Italian and German firms, but the variety of institutional settings continues to affect the evolution of businesses. Policy implications are discussed.
In most industrialized countries temporary andnon-standard forms of employment (NSFE)have become ... more In most industrialized countries temporary andnon-standard forms of employment (NSFE)have become a pervasive featureof the labor market. However, at the firm level, the diffusion of NSFE is less uniform than expected: while some firms exhibit high propensity to use NSFE, others make no use of it.Most conventional explanationsof NSFE use (market uncertainty, production regimes, competitive pressure)fail to account for such heterogeneity. In this article the authors develop an alternative explanationthat links the use of NSFE to firm-specific availability of managerial resources: whenever the latter are relatively scarce, firms make larger use of NSFE to reduce coordination and operating costs. Using a linked employer-employeepanel of manufacturing firms from the Emilia-Romagna region (Italy), the authors provide empirical support for this hypothesis. The result is robust to different estimation strategies and controlling for alternative drivers of NSFE use. This novel finding suggest...
Recessions are complex events that create perturbed and hostile business environments. When faced... more Recessions are complex events that create perturbed and hostile business environments. When faced with such event, firm survival depends only limitedly on production efficiency. Rather, it depends on the ability to cope with such complexity, which is itself a result of the firm’s corporate strategy. In particular, we expect firms adopting a corporate strategy that make relatively large (little) use of skills and capabilities to deal with environmental complexity to be less (more) likely to exit during a downturn than firms that do not. We test these hypotheses on the whole population of Italian manufacturing corporations using an open panel that covers the period 2001-2014. The results provide strong support for our hypotheses. Managerial and policy implications are discussed.
EconStor Open Access Articles, 2017
Received literature on immigrant entrepreneurship describes ethnic firms as founded to meet the n... more Received literature on immigrant entrepreneurship describes ethnic firms as founded to meet the needs of an ethnic community, display and use particular configurations of human and social capital drawing on ethnic resources. This is due, according to some authors, to the “acculturation lag” that characterize these entrepreneurs retaining traditional values from the heritage culture. Recent research has however shown that immigrant firms are undergoing significant changes in their organizational structures, such as the incorporation of native or non-co-ethnic partners or employees (i.e., firm multicultural hybridism). Nevertheless, research to date has not investigated whether these changes are accompanied by different acculturation patterns in entrepreneurs operating in companies characterized by different levels of multicultural hybridism. We tackle this question using a unique set of data collected with face-to-face interviews with 130 immigrant entrepreneurs in Northern Italy. Ta...
In the last decades, teaching of the industrial economics has been subjected to considerable tens... more In the last decades, teaching of the industrial economics has been subjected to considerable tensions. The innovations that have emerged require a deepening of the contents developed and the methodologies adopted. A recent survey, focused on the lecturers of industrial economics in the Italian universities, allows to analyze some aspects of the ongoing change. Our results show that a) the teaching of the industrial economics followed diversified evolutionary paths and showed marked specialized connotations; b) the common thematic core shared in the different courses seems to be reduced; c) innovative teaching practices have been experimentally tested, but spaces are still open for further improvement, in particular for teaching with web tools and for the adoption of methods of active students engaging.
Cambridge Journal of Economics
The stagnation of investments and its causes have attracted great attention in the recent economi... more The stagnation of investments and its causes have attracted great attention in the recent economic debate. In this paper, we show that during the Great Recession, the flattening of the capital formation rate at the firm level is not due to lower average propensity to invest. Rather, it is the result of growing heterogeneity of choices among firms. While a subset of firms is oriented towards increasing investments, another group substantially divest. The result is a polarization of conducts that tend to cancel each other out, resulting in a flattening of aggregate investment. We argue that this asymmetry in firm’s decisions depends on two main factors. The first one is the diversity of corporate strategies, which firms have developed in the past. The second driver is managerial discretion, that plays an important role in the adoption of specific investment/divestment trajectories when faced with a recession. The results of our empirical analysis provide strong support for our hypothe...
EconStor Preprints, 2020
The opinions expressed in the publication are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect... more The opinions expressed in the publication are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the International Organization for Migration (IOM). IOM and its partners will not be considered legally re sponsible for the accuracy, completeness or usefulness of any information in this publication. The designations employed and the presentation of the material through the publication do not imply the expression of any opinion whatsoever on the part of IOM concerning the legal status of any country, territory, city or area, or of its authorities, or concerning its frontiers or boundaries. IOM is committed to the principle that humane and orderly migration benefits migrants and society. As an inter governmental organization, IOM acts with its partners in the international community to: assist in meeting the operational challenges of migration; advance understanding of migration issues; encourage social and economic development through migration; and uphold the human dignity and well-being of migrants.
Few firms grow in a rapid way, but their contribution to employment growth is often impressive. T... more Few firms grow in a rapid way, but their contribution to employment growth is often impressive. The main purpose of this paper is to analyze both external and internal factors which can affect the probability of being a high-growth firm (HGF) in Italy. We found that HGFs are on average young firms and are present in different sectors, but the role of demand is important to understand their performance at sectoral level. Moreover, our findings show that financial constraints and profitability are not associated with the probability of being a fast-growing firm. HGFs, on average, are characterised by high productivity, but only when growth is measured in terms of sales. The most original results of this study concerns endogenous determinants of fast growth, which have not so far been adequately examined in the literature. First, we found that the concentration of ownership is important for HGFs that grow in sales. Second, the quality of human capital is a strong point for firms experi...
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Papers by Alessandro Arrighetti