A Spatial Multilevel Analysis of Italian SMEs Productivity

In this paper, we adapt multilevel analysis methods to investigate the spatial variability of SMEs' productivity across the Italian territory, and account for differences in the socio-economic context. Our results suggest that to properly capture the variability of the data, it is important to allow for both spatial mean and slope effects. Social decay has the expected negative impact. However, while this effect is larger on firms with smaller capital intensity, firms with higher capital intensity seem to be less affected by geography. Greater territorial heterogeneity emerges among those firms with lower capital to labour ratios.