Using total factor productivity as a measure of corporate performance, we find that Italian family‐run firms are less productive than firms run by outside managers and the result is robust to potential endogeneity of management regime. This difference tends to vanish when the age of the firms is taken into account. Also, when considering family‐owned firms only, there is no difference in performance between outside managers and family managers.
This article analyzes the influence of universities on Italian firms' probability to innovate. Using firmlevel data, we focus on institutionalized technology transfer (TT) activities in universities, namely spinoffs, patents, and research contracts. Results show that TT activities play a significant role in the probability to innovate by Italian manufacturing firms located in the same province as the university. Nevertheless, the effect is not uniform: the contribution of university TT activities to the probability of firms' innovating is concentrated in certain territorial areas (North-East and Center) and sectors (science based and scale intensive) and among firms that are large. 297 bs_bs_banner 298Cardamone et al.
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