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The purpose of this study is to investigate whether and how inter-firm cooperation and firm age moderate the relationship between family ownership and productivity.

We first estimate the total factor productivity (TFP) of a large sample of Italian firms observed over the period 2010–2018 and then apply a Poisson random effects model.

TFP is, on average, higher for non-family firms (non-FFs) than for FF. Furthermore, inter-organizational cooperation and firm age mitigate the negative effect of family ownership. In detail, it is found that belonging to a network acts as a moderator in different ways according to firm age. Indeed, young FFs underperform non-FF peers, although the TFP gap decreases with age. In contrast, the benefits of a formal network are high for older FFs, suggesting that an age-related learning process is at work.

The study provides evidence that FFs can outperform non-FFs when they move away from Socio-Emotional Wealth-centered reference points and exploit knowledge flows arising from high levels of social capital. In the case of mature FFs, networking is a driver of TFP, allowing them to acquire external resources. Since FFs often do not have sufficient in-house knowledge and resources, they must be aware of the value of business cooperation. While preserving the familiar identity of small companies, networks grant FFs the competitive and scale advantages of being large.

Despite the wide but ambiguous body of research on the performance gap between FFs and non-FFs, little is known about the role of FFs’ heterogeneity. This study has proven successful in detecting age as a factor in heterogeneity, specifically to explain the network effect on the link between ownership and TFP. Based on a representative sample, the study provides a solid framework for FFs, policymakers and academic research on family-owned companies.

The current paper extends previous studies on the match between CEO and firm and explores whether certain characteristics of young CEOs make them more desirable to young firms. Results in this paper will provide useful information to startup companies when they need to find managers leading the firms.

This study use a large sample of panel regression to study the match between CEOs and firm via a difference-in-differences approach.

The author finds that young firms hire a disproportionately higher percentage of young CEOs than established firms. Young firms led by young CEOs exhibit higher growth rates in sales and assets and invest more in capital expenditure and R&D activities than similar firms led by older CEOs. Young CEOs in young firms also receive higher compensation than both older CEOs working in young firms and young CEOs working in established firms.

There are many studies examining how CEO age affect their decision-making process. There are also many studies examining the differences between young firms and established firms. However, there is no study so far examining the intersection of the two questions above. Specifically, whether the differences between young vs established firms make certain characteristics of young CEOs beneficial to young firms.

The purpose of this paper is to contribute to the determinants of export performance literature. The authors investigate the effect of firm characteristics on the Douro region wine firms export performance. The authors consider the Douro region, as it has the Portugal highest wine classification, the appellation d’origine contrôlée and undertakes the first position in the Portuguese wine production and export.

The authors apply a pooling cross-sectional data set that includes 427 observations. The authors pooled two cross sections consisting of 214 and 213 firms for the years 2014 and 215, respectively. The firm export intensity and propensity are the dependent variables. Moreover, the firm size, age and productive efficiency are accounted as the firm characteristics. The authors use the ordinary least squares regression and the tobit and probit models for estimations.

First, size is an influential factor to improve the export performance, and the importance of size is higher for younger firms. Second, there is a positive response from export intensity to age and this response is higher for smaller firms. However, there is a negative response from the export propensity to age and this negative response is higher for bigger firms. Third, there is weak evidence to support a relationship between efficiency and export performance.

This research and the presented results are undoubtedly under some limitations. The main limitation is about the data availability for all characteristics of a firm. For example, it will enrich the result if the authors add some other important variables such as production cost, research and development expenditure and the quality of produced wine by each firm to our analysis.

This research reveals that the influence of firm characteristics on the export performance of Portuguese wine firms is missing in the literature. The results provide a basis to Portuguese wineries to improve their export performance by applying the relevant strategies.

The purpose of this paper is twofold: first, to investigate the effect of top management team (TMT) tenure diversity and firm financial performance (return on equity [ROE], return on assets [ROA]), and, second, to examine the moderating effect of TMT average age between TMT tenure diversity and firm performance.

The paper presented results from a quantitative study of 744 TMTs in Japanese manufacturing firms. The multiple hierarchical regression analysis was used to test the hypotheses.

The results show that TMT tenure diversity had a negative and significant main effect on ROE but not ROA. Furthermore, the results also indicated that the negative relationship between TMT tenure diversity and firm performance was attenuated by having older TMTs.

First, this paper expands scope of research on TMT diversity, which has hitherto primarily on non-individualistic variables (such as industry setting) by examining the moderating role of an individualistic variable (TMT average age). Second, this paper extended the attempts to apply the age-related theory by considering the role from the viewpoint of group level, namely, TMT average age.

This study explores the role of firm age as a mediating variable in the link between performance and the risk of terrorism. Theoretically, there can be vulnerabilities, liabilities or learning effects associated with age.

The empirical strategy uses randomness in the occurrence of successful terrorist incidents to estimate the hypothesized link in a sample of 1,600 Pakistani firms.

The results suggest a significant effect of terrorism for organizations lying beyond the 50th percentile of the age distribution. In addition to relevant controls – like size, ownership and location effects – the baseline results withstand alternative empirical specifications and the use of instrumental variables.

The study helps us understand the role of firm age in its performance, taking into account the presence of risks posed by weak law and order.

Given the ongoing demographic change in European countries, this paper aims to explore empirically the link between age structures of employees in firms and firm performance.

Based on theoretical considerations, the paper examines the link between both the average age and the standard deviation of employees' age and firms' value added per employee. Linked employer employee data of all private‐sector firms in Denmark with at least 20 employees is used.

A pyramidal or inverse U‐shaped interrelation is found between mean age and standard deviation of age and value added per employee, respectively.

It would be interesting to determine whether the results hold for different countries with other institutional environments.

This is the first paper to examine the link between corporate age structures and firm performance for a whole country. The paper gives insights for both academic scholars and practitioners, who may take the results into account in formulating an efficient personnel policy.

The purpose of this paper is to evaluate empirically the relationship between workforce age, wage and productivity at the firm level.

Panel data techniques are applied to Belgian data on private sector workers and firms during 1999‐2006.

Results (robust to various potential econometric issues, including unobserved firm heterogeneity, endogeneity and state dependence) suggest that older workers are significantly less productive than prime age and young workers. In contrast, the productivity of middle‐aged workers is not found to be significantly different compared to young workers. Findings further indicate that average hourly wages within firms increase significantly with workers’ age. Overall, this leads to the conclusion that young (older) workers appear to be “underpaid” (“overpaid”).

These findings contribute to the growing literature on how the workforce age structure affects productivity and wages.

The purpose of this study is to investigate the impact of the age diversity of the top management team (TMT) on firm performance and on the managerial ability of the TMT. Furthermore, this study investigates how the relationship between age diversity and firm performance is mediated by managerial ability and the contextual nature of the relationship.

This is an empirical study which uses regression analyses and mediation analyses to evaluate the hypotheses.

The authors observe a negative relationship between age diversity and firm performance and also between age diversity and managerial ability of the TMT. Further, the authors find that that the negative relationship between age diversity and firm performance is mediated by managerial ability. The authors also find that the relation between performance and age diversity is context specific – the negative relationship between age diversity and firm performance is ameliorated during times of financial crisis.

In an environment where diversity is beginning to be valued, insights into the impact of different types of diversity on performance become important. Age diversity is a critical component of diversity. Therefore, insights into the impact of age diversity on performance will be of interest to managers, academics and even regulators.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this study is the first to evaluate the impact of age diversity on the market perception of firm performance of US firms using a large, comprehensive, multi-year data set. Furthermore, this is the only study to evaluate the impact of age diversity on managerial ability and show the mediating effect of managerial ability on the relationship between age diversity and firm performance.

Based on socioemotional selectivity theory, the authors aimed to develop and test hypotheses that identify the direct effect of top management team (TMT) age diversity on firms’ financial performance (return on equity [ROE], return on assets [ROA]) and the interactive effect of TMT age diversity and TMT average age on firms’ financial performance.

The paper presents results from a quantitative study of 867 TMTs in Korean manufacturing firms. Multiple hierarchical regression analysis was used to test the hypotheses.

The results show that TMT age diversity had a negative and significant main effect on ROE but not on ROA. They also indicate that the negative relationship between TMT age diversity and firm performance (ROE) was attenuated when the members of TMTs were relatively older.

First, this study extends existing TMT research, which mainly focuses on macro factors, such as industry and environment, by using micro factors, including TMT age diversity and TMT average age. Second, this paper combines and extends previous TMT studies, which have been dominated by either “property” or “tendency”, by examining the interactive effect of the distributional property (diversity) and central tendency (average) of TMT age on firms’ financial performance. Finally, this study indicates that socioemotional selectivity theory may be useful to explain the link between TMT age diversity and firms’ financial performance.

The purpose of this paper is to analyse the determinants of hiring and exit rates by age at the firm level and firm-level age segregation in hirings and separations in Finland.

The use Finnish linked employer-employee data from 1990 to 2004. The authors present a decomposition of employment change by age group to disentangle the roles of hirings and exits from factors related to demographics effects. Firm-level analysis is conducted using regression models for the hiring rates and shares of different age groups and for the probability of hiring older employees. Similar models are estimated for the exits of older employees. Segregation is analysed using age segregation curves and Gini indices calculated from them.

The hirings of older (50+) employees have clearly been more segregated at the firm level than the exits or the stock of old employees. Larger firms are more likely to hire older employees, but their hiring rates are lower. However, the probability of having hires or exits of older workers are much higher in large firms. The results are relatively similar for men and women.

The determinants of the probability of hiring older workers and the rate of hiring them, given that the rate is positive, are different and these two processes should be modelled separately. The Gini index of segregation may be misleading when the number of employees per firm is small. Therefore it is useful to compare segregation to a random reshuffle of employees to firms.

Older worker who have become unemployed or who want to change their job need to have more employment opportunities. Labour and pension policies need to be monitored and designed so that there are more incentives for the individual to search for a new job and for the firms to hire older employees.

The authors provide new empirical evidence of age segregation and hiring prospects of older employees. Age segregation has previously been examined in occupations, but the authors extend the analysis to firm-level segregation. The authors suggest a new decomposition of the rate of employment change to the hiring and exit rates and to a cohort effect.