Economic downturns significantly impact on industry and firm dynamics. During a slowdown, increased competitive pressure makes less efficient firms more likely to exit (the cleansing hypothesis). However, evidence on Italian manufacturing firms during the Great Recession contrasts with this view. In fact, a not negligible subset of firms grew considerably during the crisis, increasing intra-industry heterogeneity. In this paper, we study these swimming upstream firms (SUFs) and we obtain two results. First, SUFs exhibit a high capability accumulation profile (innovation, intangibles investments and internationalization). Second, the impact of endogenous capability accumulation does not vanish after controlling for exogenous factors.

中文翻译：

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在动荡中逆流而上：大衰退期间公司增长的证据

经济衰退对行业和企业动态产生重大影响。在经济放缓期间，竞争压力的增加使效率较低的公司更有可能退出（清洗假说）。然而，大萧条期间意大利制造企业的证据与这种观点形成鲜明对比。事实上，在危机期间，一个不可忽视的公司子集大幅增长，增加了行业内的异质性。在本文中，我们研究了这些游动的上游公司( SUF )，并获得了两个结果。首先，SUF表现出很高的能力积累概况（创新、无形资产投资和国际化）。其次，在控制了外生因素后，内生能力积累的影响并没有消失。