Vitali G., Filippi M., Manello A., Working Paper Cnr-Ceris, N° 14/2012

1. INTRODUCTION4

M

icro firms managed by foreign
entrepreneurs are increasing and are
spread all over the Italian provinces and
economic sectors. The phenomenon is not linear, as
the geographical distribution of foreign firms is
affected by a lot of factors, some of them are local,
and others depend on the cultural characteristics of
the entrepreneur’s ethnic.
This paper focuses on the different entrepreneurship
attitude of the foreign immigrants at province level
in Italy.
Immigrant firms are one of the potential key factors
for renewing economic growth in Italy, mainly at
local level. Some contributions concentrated on
specific geographical areas, such as Chiesi and
Zucchetti (2003) who analyze the Milan commercial
sector, and FIERI (2008) that studies ethnic groups
and their economic specialization within the area of
Turin. They show important differences among
sectors and ethnic groups, as the economic
specialization of foreign firms is mainly defined by
ethnic, such as Chinese firms in the textile industry,
or Egyptian firms in the construction sector. In
addition, data show that there is a geographical
specialization of ethnic too, such as Chinese firms at
Prato and Egyptians firms at Milan. The strong
relationships between sectors and local areas suggest
the importance of foreign firms for the development
of Italian industrial districts and local clusters.
This
paper
sheds
light
on
immigrant
entrepreneurship in Italy, with a focus on
entrepreneurial rates and on firm growth rates at
province level5.
The goal of the paper is twofold. On the one hand, it
wishes to find out if the entrepreneurial rate of
4
We are grateful to the participants at the XXXIII AISRe
Conference in Rome for their useful comments and suggestions.
Financial support from “Progetto Migrazioni” by Dipartimento
Identità Culturale CNR and ISSM-CNR is gratefully
acknowledged. We thank Enrico Viarisio for his editing support.
Section 1 and section 6 are written by Vitali, section 2 and
section 5 by Manello, section 3 and 4 by Filippi.
5
In this paper the terms foreign firms and foreign
entrepreneurs refer to firms set up in Italy by individuals born
abroad, but living and operating in Italy.

immigrants is affected by local factors or by ethnic
characteristics. On the other hand, the paper focuses
on the growth rate of micro firms, in order to check
the importance of the above-mentioned factors
The structure of this paper is as follows.
Section 2 surveys the economic theory on immigrant
entrepreneurships, and the theoretical framework is
used to develop the empirical analysis made in the
next sections.
Section 3 provides a descriptive analysis of the
phenomenon, using ISTAT data about selfemployment in Italy within the 2001-2009 period.
The section focuses on the features of the foreign
entrepreneurs within the different geographical areas
in Italy.
Section 4 develops the econometric analysis, in
order to control the factors that affect the immigrant
entrepreneurial rate and the immigrant firm growth
at province level.
Some concluding remarks summarize the main
results of the paper.

2. ETHNIC ENTREPRENEURSHIPS: SOME
THEORETICAL ASPECTS
Ethnic entrepreneurship is an important phenomenon
that could have important effect on society and
economy.
On the one hand, some authors focus on the
immigrant side underlining the importance of self
employment in increasing the welfare of minorities,
as self-employment allows to exploit talents and
increase the own satisfaction of immigrants (Clark
and
Drinkwater,
2010).
Moreover,
the
entrepreneurship of immigrants could increase the
possibilities of reducing social exclusion thanks to
economic development based on self-employment
(Sahin et al., 2011).
On the other hand, some contributions underline the
positive effects of immigrant firms on the whole
economic system, in relation to increase competition
and to supply local consumers with new products
and services. In general, what emerges from the
5