Exadaktylos, Dimitrios (2022) Essays on firms' competitiveness. Advisor: Riccaboni, Prof. Massimo. Coadvisor: Rungi, Prof. Armando . pp. 169. [IMT PhD Thesis]
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Text (Doctoral thesis)
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Abstract
As competition becomes intense, firms seek strategies to keep afloat. Among others, they carefully choose their activity location, recruit a talented workforce, and engage in innovation. In this thesis, we shed light on these three features empirically, mainly using econometric techniques. Our contribution is in the literature of firms’ competitiveness, industrial organization and economic geography. At first, we study regional productivity disparities and their interplay with local agglomeration advantages. To do so, we apply a density-based machine learning clustering algorithm to identify firms’ clusters at a fine-grained geographic scale on a sample of Italian firms. Then, we observe simultaneously the extent to which clusters explain agglomeration economies and firm selection effects. Our findings suggest that dense clusters generate agglomeration externalities that are heterogeneous across regions. In the second part of the thesis, we investigate the impact of foreign managers on firms’ competitiveness on a sample of firms operating in the United Kingdom. We show that domestic firms become more efficient after recruiting foreigners to their management team due to previous industry-specific experience. In the last part, we assess the impact of patents on market share and labour productivity in the global Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) sector. Using a recent difference-in-difference approach, we find that patenting increase market share without significantly affecting labour productivity. Our evidence indicates some concerns regarding the implications of property rights from innovation on market competition.
| Item Type: | IMT PhD Thesis |
|---|---|
| Subjects: | H Social Sciences > HB Economic Theory |
| PhD Course: | Economics, Networks and Business Analytics |
| Identification Number: | https://doi.org/10.13118/imtlucca/e-theses/362 |
| NBN Number: | urn:nbn:it:imtlucca-28385 |
| Date Deposited: | 26 Jul 2022 07:44 |
| URI: | http://e-theses.imtlucca.it/id/eprint/362 |
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