Ownership Network and Firm Performance: Evidence From Italy.
Skype: school.socialsciences
2 PM, room 3E, Department of Economics and Management
Speaker: Xu Wang, IMT Lucca
Abstract
In this paper we explore the relation between ownership network and firm performance using the data of Italian firms. We construct the ownership network based on the direct inter-firm shareholding relationships and extract the upstream and/or downstream ownership structures for each Italian firm. As a result, each firm can be classified into one of the eight prototypes of ownership structures depending on whether it has upstream parent firms, whether it has downstream affiliates, and whether foreign firms are involved in the structure. We find that the multinational firms have a higher labor productivity than the domestic ones. More interestingly, among the multinational firms, the Italian firms being controlled by foreign firms have a higher labor productivity than those controlling foreign firms.