Firm entry and exit in Italian provinces and the relationship with unemployment

This study investigates the influence of the unemployment rate on firm entry, exit and net entry in Italian provinces. We attempt to explain these market dynamics in six different sectors, including manufacturing, construction, commerce, hotels and restaurants, transport and financial services. We control for other regional factors, such as patenting activity, economic growth, economic welfare, tourism, industrial districts and whether being a major city. Findings indicate that the effects of unemployment on entry and exit are dependent upon the sector under study, but are mainly negative. This suggests a lack of dynamics in the Italian regional labor markets.

Ownership structure and firm performance in emerging markets: A comparative meta-analysis of East European EU member states,Russia and China

Using a total of 4425 estimates collected from 204 previous studies, this paper presents a meta-analysis performed to compare East European EU member states, Russia and China in terms of the relationship between ownership structure and firm performance. The results indicate that, as the standard theory predicts, state ownership negatively influences the performance of firms the state invests in, while the presence of domestic outside investors and foreign investors as company owners positively affects firm performance irrespective of the difference in country/region. Furthermore, we also found that ownership of managers tends to exert a positive impact on the performance of their owned firms. Overall, however, the linkage between corporate ownership and performance is weak. This finding implies that, in comparison with advanced economies, management discipline by investors is less sufficient in emerging markets.     

Business model innovation and third-party alliance on the survival of new firms

In this study, we address the question of how the degree of business model innovation affects the survival of new firms. We present a newly constructed data set of 129 new firms that launched electronic trading platforms in the US bond market between 1995 and 2004 following the advent of Internet technology. We analyze the founding and survival of these new firms during the period of our study. We find that new firms with a high or low degree of business model innovation are more likely to survive for longer than new firms with a moderate degree of business model innovation. We show that partnering with third-party firms with complementary assets reduces the survival of new firms as the degree of business model innovation increases. We discuss the implications of our findings for managers, policy-makers and researchers.     

Current account and real effective exchange rate misalignments in Central Eastern EU countries: An update using the macroeconomic balance approach

We make an assessment of the current account and price competitiveness of the Central Eastern European countries that joined the EU, using data up to 2016. Foreign capital flows, fiscal balance and relative output growth seem to play a crucial role in explaining the current account balance. The real effective exchange rate gaps behave in accord with the current account misalignments, which clearly display cyclical behaviour. When foreign direct investments are introduced as a determinant, the misalignments are larger in boom periods (positive misalignments), whereas the negative misalignments are smaller in magnitude. Overall, the countries have moved closer to their equilibria since 2010.