Ownership, Governance, Management and Firm Performance: Evidence from Italian Firms

A. Baltrunaite, S. Formai, Andrea Linarello and Sauro Mocetti
Additional contact information
A. Baltrunaite: Bank of Italy: Banca d’Italia
S. Formai: Bank of Italy: Banca d’Italia

Italian Economic Journal: A Continuation of Rivista Italiana degli Economisti and Giornale degli Economisti, 2024, vol. 10, issue 3, No 3, 993-1027

Abstract: Abstract We explore the role of ownership, governance and management characteristics as potential drivers of the performance gaps between firms located in the Centre North and South of Italy. First, we document that southern firms are characterized by a more frequent family ownership and a higher fraction of local and family directors within the board. Moreover, entrepreneurs and managers of Southern firms have lower education and are less inclined to adopt structured managerial practices and advanced technology. Second, we examine to what extent these differences account for the performance gap between the two areas. We find that managers’ human capital explains one tenth of the difference in firm size; family ownership accounts for one tenth of the differences in productivity. Although the analysis is purely descriptive, our findings suggest that ownership, governance and management play a significant role in explaining firm performance and account for a non-negligible fraction of the North–South divide.

Keywords: Ownership; Family firms; Corporate governance; Managerial practices; Human capital; Firm size; Productivity; Technology (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: G30 L20 M10 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2024
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://link.springer.com/10.1007/s40797-023-00237-3 Abstract (text/html)
Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.

Related works:
Working Paper: Ownership, Governance, Management and Firm Performance: Evidence from Italian Firms (2022)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:spr:italej:v:10:y:2024:i:3:d:10.1007_s40797-023-00237-3

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.springer.com/economics/journal/40797

DOI: 10.1007/s40797-023-00237-3

Access Statistics for this article

Italian Economic Journal: A Continuation of Rivista Italiana degli Economisti and Giornale degli Economisti is currently edited by Roberto Cellini

More articles in Italian Economic Journal: A Continuation of Rivista Italiana degli Economisti and Giornale degli Economisti from Springer, Società Italiana degli Economisti (Italian Economic Association) Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().