Impact of Urban Conditions of Firm Performance of Migrant Entrepreneurs: A Comparative Dutch - US Study

Recent studies on ethnic entrepreneurship have pointed at an increasing share of migrants in urban small- and medium-sized entrepreneurial businesses. These migrant activities are crucial to the urban economy in many countries, as they employ a significant part of the workforce. The main objective of our study is to identify success conditions of ethnic entrepreneurship by using concepts from social capital and human capital from the literature on empirical factors that are responsible for successful ethnic entrepreneurship. The empirical part of the paper is based on a survey questionnaire among migrant entrepreneurs in the city of Amsterdam in the Netherlands and in Fairfax, County in the state of Virginia in the US. We present an overview of cultural, ethno-psychological and motivational aspects that contribute to the understanding of similarities and differences between ethnic entrepreneurs in both locations. The analysis is structured around several dimensions of social and human capital including personal and business characteristics, and network participation for improving business performance. The findings of the two studies are compared to explore a possible correspondence in business performance patterns. The research tool used to assess performance is Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA), a technique for comparative efficiency analysis in various types of corporate organizations. Finally, concluding remarks are presented and possible extensions of the analysis are suggested. © Springer-Verlag 2009

Assessment of subjective economic well-being in Italy

Using the European Survey on Income and Living Conditions for the year 2005, we analyze the subjective economic well-being and its determinants relating to some sub-groups of Italian households by means of an Ordered Logit Model (OLM), whose dependent variable is represented by a perception variable, that is the ability of households to make ends meet. The empirical results highlight that the main determinants of subjective economic well-being are the same for the four typologies of households. The subjective economic well-being is not only related to the economic status, but it is mostly influenced by socio-demographic variables, as work and education conditions. Furthermore, the level of subjective well-being of Italian households changes passing from a specific status of socio-demographic variable to another one

Is Participation in Tourism Market an Opportunity for Everyone? Some Evidence from Italy

Exploring the main determinants of tourism participation at national and international level, the paper investigates if there are differences in tourism consumption behavior among Italian families which reflect disparities in their standard of living. To achieve this a Heckman model has been used on a huge sample of Italian households over the period 1997-2007. Results show that participation in the tourism market is strongly affected by the personal characteristics of individuals and that tourism consumption is an income sensitive good. The analysis reveals that tourism is generally a luxury good reflecting the disparities in the standard of living among Italian families. We have found that participation in the tourism market is affected not only by economic constraints, but also by cultural and territorial factors

The Determinants of Subjective Economic Well-being: An Analysis on Italian SILC Data

Using Italian data on Income and living conditions for the year 2005, the paper investigates the main determinants of households’ subjective economic well-being by means of a Partial Proportional Ordered Logit Model. According to a joint subjective and objective perspective of analysis, we use as dependent variable the perceived ability of households to make ends meet. Whereas, we use as explanatory variables some objective aspects of living conditions relating to housing, financial equilibrium, possession of durables and quality of residence place and some socio-demographic characteristics. The empirical results show that the financial strain is the most relevant dimension of living conditions influencing the subjective economic well-being, but its effect is attenuated depending on the level of education and the tenure status of accommodation. Actually, when the highest levels of education are coupled with the status of self-employee and house-owner households have more chances to reach a higher probability to be economically satisfied. The insights coming out from the results may call for different policy measures depending on the degree of well-being and the characteristics of households. In particular, more efficient policies would be oriented to sustain the households’ income, to encourage to buy a house and to allow young people to get the highest levels of education

Dimensioni di benessere tra le famiglie italiane. Un’analisi sui dati EU-SILC 2005

Il presente lavoro, utilizzando le informazioni dell’indagine EU-SILC (European Statistics on Income and Living Conditions) del 2005 su 22.032 famiglie italiane, si pone come obiettivo l’analisi e la misura del benessere multidimensionale. Nel paragrafo 2 sono riportate le ipotesi teoriche, mentre nel paragrafo 3 è riportata l’analisi dei risultati e alcune considerazioni conclusive

Composition of families and subjective economic well-being: an application to Italian context

Using Italian data on Income and Living Conditions for the year 2005, the paper explores empirically whether the determinants of subjective economic well-being (SEW) differ (or not) in four representative typologies of households. By means of a Partial Proportional Ordered Logit Model the subjective economic well-being – proxied by the capacity of households to make ends meet – has been explored. Results highlight the variables acting on SEW, common to each typology, are related both to economic status (specifically, the capacity to pay taxes and to afford housing, clothes and holiday expenditures) and to socio-demographic status (specifically, the work-status and the highest level of education). A more in depth analysis, by level of education, shows the economic precariousness of some specific typologies, namely families with one person, with two or more children, and those whose respondent has a very low level of education

A New Spatial Shift-Share Decomposition: An Application to Tourism Competitiveness in Italian Regions

The paper proposes a new version of spatial shift-share decomposition to improve on the various approaches to conventional shift-share analysis found in the literature. The novelty of our proposal is that it enables researchers to assess spatial competitiveness effects controlling for the influence of industrial specialization at both regional and neighborhood level. This new version is applied to inbound tourism in Italian regions and enables us to identify the best and worst performers. Our empirical results identify favorable scenarios in some areas of the country, such as Sardinia as well as regional advantage in a sizeable number of well-known destinations

A spatial analysis of new business formation: Replicative vs innovative behaviour

Using spatial econometric tools, the paper examines the spatial structure of new business formation of Italian regions during the period 2004\u20132007. In particular, the study empirically investigates whether new business formation in a given geographical area may be explained in terms of replicative and/or innovative entrepreneurial behaviour in each area as well as in the neighbouring areas. Additionally, the analysis focuses on the influence of urbanization on the birth of new firms. From the estimation of a Spatial Durbin Model, we find a significant degree of spatial dependence among Italian regions not only in new business formation but also in some of its determinants. We also find that new business formation in Italy can be explained in terms of both replicative and innovative entrepreneurial behaviour, whose effects depend strictly on the degree of urbanization. Specifically, the replicative behaviour of new firms seems to be significantly dependent on the degree of urbanization, i.e. we find positive effects only when regions are lowly urbanized. A similar result is not found for the innovative behaviour, which positively influences new business formation independently on the degree of urbanization. However, when regions are lowly urbanized, some obstacles to new business of innovative nature can be observed