1,720,968 research outputs found
Family firms' access to bank lending. Evidence from Italy
Full text linkIn this study I empirically investigate whether family businesses are more likely to face financing constraints in the access to bank lending. By employing detailed qualitative and quantitative information about companies' ownership structure, rationing condition and bank-firm relationship characteristics, I find that family ownership adversely and significantly affect the probability of experiencing credit restrictions in the bank lending market. When accounting for ownership concentration, however, estimation results show that this finding remains statistically significant only for highly concentrated family firms. By looking at family business groups, moreover, I find that internal capital markets contribute to alleviate the existence of financing constraints. Overall, these results confirm the idea that the agency conflicts associated with highly concentrated family companies simultaneously increase risk shifting problems and wealth-expropriation phenomena with adverse consequences on the access to credit
Does family ownership structure affect investment-cash flow sensitivity? Evidence from Italian SMEs
No full textThe aim of this article is to investigate whether family control, family management and family ownership concentration affect the investment-cash flow sensitivity of small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). By analysing a sample of Italian SMEs for the period 2004–2013, I find that family-owned businesses are significantly associated with higher investment-cash flow dependence. This relation, however, is found to be driven by two distinct factors: (i) the presence of a highly concentrated family ownership (ownership concentration channel) and (ii) the active involvement of the family in the business (family management channel)
Relational capital in lending relationships. Evidence from European family firms
No full textThe aim of this paper is to investigate the role of family CEOs’ relational capital and non-family CEOs’ managerial skills in the context of bank relationships for a large sample of small- and medium-sized European firms. The results indicate that family firms appointing family managers are significantly more likely to maintain soft-information-based and longer-lasting lending relationships than family firms managed by professionals, and that these closer bank-firm ties reduce the likelihood of experiencing credit restrictions. Moreover, we find that having professional CEOs does not directly affect the probability of being credit rationed. Hence, family relational capital appears to have a univocal beneficial impact on bank-firm relationships
Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis
Full text linkThe present study examines one of the fundamental aspects of author co-citation analysis (ACA) - the way co-citation
counts are defined. Co-citation counting provides the data on which all subsequent statistical analyses and mappings
are based, and we compare ACA results based on two different types of co-citation counting - the traditional type that
only counts the first one among a cited work's authors on the one hand and a non-traditional type that takes into
account the first 5 authors of a cited work on the other hand. Results indicate that the picture produced through this non-traditional author co-citation counting contains more coherent author groups and is therefore considerably clearer. However, this picture represents fewer specialties in the research field being studied than that produced through the traditional first-author co-citation counting when the same number of top-ranked authors is selected and analyzed. Reasons for these effects are discussed
Variations on the Author
Full text link“Variations on the Author” discusses two of Eduardo Coutinho’s recent films (Um Dia na Vida, from 2010, and Últimas Conversas, posthumously released in 2015) and their contribution to the general question of documentary authorship. The director’s filmography is characterized by a consistent yet self-effacing form of authorial self-inscription: Coutinho often features as an interviewer that rather than express opinions propels discourses; an interviewer that is good at listening. This mode of self-inscription characterizes him as an author who is not expressive but who is nonetheless markedly present on the screen. In Um Dia na Vida, however, Coutinho is completely absent form the image, while Últimas Conversas, on the contrary, includes a confessional prologue that moves the director from the margins to the center of his films. This article examines the ways in which these works stand out in the filmography of a director who offers new insights into the notion of cinematic authorship
Appropriate Similarity Measures for Author Cocitation Analysis
Full text linkWe provide a number of new insights into the methodological discussion about author cocitation analysis. We first argue that the use of the Pearson correlation for measuring the similarity between authors’ cocitation profiles is not very satisfactory. We then discuss what kind of similarity measures may be used as an alternative to the Pearson correlation. We consider three similarity measures in particular. One is the well-known cosine. The other two similarity measures have not been used before in the bibliometric literature. Finally, we show by means of an example that our findings have a high practical relevance.information science;Pearson correlation;cosine;similarity measure;author cocitation analysis
Can we make better use of our operating theatres?
No full text The use of new applications in surgical path management
can improve the efficiency of the operating theatre.
 Increased utilisation of surgical rooms results in better
rationalisation of available resources of the Hospital
Post-crisis firm survival, business model changes, and learning: evidence from the Italian manufacturing industry
Full text linkCompany survival after recessions depends on the entrepreneurial ability of decision makers to react to the crisis and learn how to make the best use of chances. The aim of this paper is to shed light on the relationship between post-crisis firm survival, learning, and firm’s entrepreneurial behavior measured by business model changes. Specifically, we test if firm survival after the 2009 recession has been affected by changes in the business model occurred in the period of recovery between the two recessions (2004–08), and if these changes are the result of deliberate reactions to the 2003 recession—i.e., learning hypothesis. The analysis of 67,241 Italian manufacturing firms suggests that business model changes have affected post-crisis firm survival by lowering the probability of default. However, the adoption of these default-reducing business model changes did not result to be significantly more frequent in firms that performed poorly during the 2003 crisis, thus providing weak support to the role of entrepreneurial learning in reducing defaults
Family firms and access to credit. Is family ownership beneficial?
Full text linkThis paper investigates the impact of family ownership on credit rationing using a rich sample of Italian firms. Estimation results indicate that family owned firms are more likely to experience credit restrictions. The adverse impact of family ownership on credit rationing is particularly relevant for small-sized firms, whereas it is mitigated in firms with closer lending relationships. Finally, we find some evidence that family firms with high ownership concentration are more likely to be rationed by banks
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