ABSTRACT

This work investigates whether different demand sources (i.e. demand for the firms’ output from households, other firms and the public sector) have different effects on firms’ employment growth and whether the growth effects of the demand sources vary by the firms’ innovation/knowledge characteristics. Relying on a representative sample of Italian companies observed between 2012 and 2017, we find that companies serving prevalently other firms or the government as their main demand source tend to grow faster than firms selling final goods to households. However, the growth advantage is more robust for firms serving prevalently other firms as their main demand source. We also find that the relative growth advantage is more pronounced among innovation-intensive and knowledge-intensive firms supplying other firms prevalently. Our findings are robust to the inclusion of firm-level controls and time, sectoral and geographical dummies. Confirming one of the major insights of both the Keynesian and the Schumpeterian traditions, demand emerges as a key driver of growth, the effects of which are mediated by the firms’ innovation/knowledge characteristics.

摘要

这项工作调查了不同的需求来源（即家庭、其他企业和公共部门对企业产出的需求）是否对企业的就业增长有不同的影响，以及需求来源的增长效应是否因企业的创新/知识而异特征。依赖于 2012 年至 2017 年间观察到的意大利公司的代表性样本，我们发现主要服务于其他公司或政府作为其主要需求来源的公司往往比向家庭出售最终产品的公司增长更快。然而，对于普遍服务于其他公司作为其主要需求来源的公司而言，增长优势更为强劲。我们还发现，相对增长优势在为其他企业提供服务的创新密集型和知识密集型企业中更为明显。我们的发现对于包含公司层面的控制和时间、部门和地理虚拟变量是稳健的。确认凯恩斯主义和熊彼特传统的主要见解之一，需求成为增长的关键驱动力，其影响由公司的创新/知识特征调节。