CARATTERISTICHE DIMENSIONALI E DEMOGRAFICHE DELLA GRANDE IMPRESA IN ITALIA: UN’ANALISI COMPARATA

The thesis addresses the issue of Italian firms size, investigating the structural characteristics of big companies and the causes that influence the size distribution. The research is based both on international literature about market structure and size distribution, and on the Italian literature about dimensions of national firms. First of all the goal is to verify whether the size of Italian big firms differs from the one of other European countries (namely, France, Germany, England and Spain). Secondly, it will be proposed an interpretative framework that helps to clarify the reasons that determine the persistence of size diversity between different countries’ firms. The research path has been developed through three stages: the first, presenting an analysis on the competitiveness of Italian firms, the second showing the theoretical framework and the last dealing with the empirical analysis of structural features and dynamic processes with regards to a sample of big European companies. The analysis confirmed that the averagely smaller size of Italian firms is due in part to endogenous features, such as ownership, and in part to exogenous ones, such as the institutional context. Therefore, it is possible to conclude that the size of big Italian companies depends on a multiplicity of factors: internal, institutional and related to the industry.