Footnote:
Nach Informationen von SSRN wurde die ursprüngliche Fassung des Dokuments November 28, 2022 erstellt
Description:
During the last years, the attention of scholars and policy makers on the effects of innovation and digitalization in the economy has constantly increased. The paper analyses this setting by investigating the causal relationship between the business dynamism of Italian companies in terms of churn rate that indicates how frequently new firms are created and existing enterprises close down (reflecting the Italy’s capacity of “creative destruction”). The level of digitalization and innovation have been measured using the territorial broadband penetration, as proxy of digitalization and patent applications of Information Technology (IT) to European Patent Office (EPO), as proxy of innovation. The study has been performed by examining a ten-year period from 2010-2019. The main finding suggests that, on average, current and past territorial penetration of the broadband has incentivized the creation of Italian enterprises, balancing the losses derived from the local business breakdowns. Also, IT patents play a key role to create and/or innovate the business value, by increasing productivity that affects the territorial growth. However, results suggest that the effects of IT patents on the churn rate of enterprises located in the Centre-North and South of Italy are dissimilar. In fact, while current and past territorial development of broadband exercise similar meaningful effects over businesses’ churn rate in the northern and southern territories, IT patents’ applications have significant influence over the churn rate of enterprises located in the Centre-North only, evidencing disparities in the scenario of the business dynamism of the country