{"id":111,"date":"2016-11-01T11:13:03","date_gmt":"2016-11-01T11:13:03","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blog.bham.ac.uk\/cityredi\/?p=111"},"modified":"2017-05-08T16:12:53","modified_gmt":"2017-05-08T15:12:53","slug":"research-into-ethnic-diversity-firm-performance-and-cities","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.bham.ac.uk\/cityredi\/research-into-ethnic-diversity-firm-performance-and-cities\/","title":{"rendered":"Research into ethnic diversity, firm performance and cities"},"content":{"rendered":"

A growing literature examines how ethnic diversity influences economic outcomes in cities and inside firms. However, firm\u2013city interactions remain more or less unexplored. A recent paper published by City REDI\u2019s Max Nathan<\/a> provides new insights into the links between ethnic diversity and firm performance within different urban environments.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The paper – published in\u00a0Environment and Planning A<\/a> and available open access\u00a0here<\/a> – looks at the\u00a0links between<\/strong>\u00a0ethnic diversity in firms\u2019 top teams<\/strong>\u00a0(owners, partners and directors) and\u00a0the performance of those firms <\/strong>(specifically, how much revenue they make). It also looks at how those linkages vary across\u00a0different types of firms<\/strong>, and how\u00a0different types of urban environment may help\u00a0<\/strong>or may not.<\/p>\n

For a more detailed account, here\u2019s the abstract:<\/p>\n

A growing literature examines how ethnic diversity influences economic outcomes in cities and inside firms. However, firm\u2013city interactions remain more or less unexplored. Ethnic diversity may help firm performance by introducing a wider range of ideas,\u00a0improving scrutiny or improving international market access. Urban locations may amplify in-firm processes via agglomeration economies,\u00a0externalities from urban demography or both. These firm\u2013city effects may be more beneficial for knowledge-intensive firms, and for young firms with a greater dependence on their environment. However, firm\u2013city interactions could be negative for cost and competition-sensitive younger firms, or for firms operating in poorer, segregated urban markets. I deploy English cross-sectional\u00a0data to explore these issues within firms\u2019 \u2018top teams\u2019, using latent class analysis to tackle firm-level heterogeneity. I\u00a0find positive diversity\u2013performance links for larger, knowledge-intensive firms, and positive firm\u2013city interactions both for\u00a0larger, knowledge-intensive firms in London and for younger, smaller firms in second-tier metros.<\/em><\/p>\n

In a recent post<\/a>, Max<\/a> comments on his motivation for the research and what he found:<\/p>\n

There\u2019s now a decent diversity literature\u00a0(see for example\u00a0this academic review<\/a>, or\u00a0this\u00a0great Andy Haldane speech<\/a>). But we know much less about these gnarlier issues.<\/p>\n

I find\u00a0positive diversity-links \u2013 but only for certain kinds of companies. The strongest links are for a group of large, knowledge-intensive businesses who comprise about 16% of my sample. The role of cities is also complex. For this first group, being in London amplifies the diversity \u2018effects\u2019.<\/p>\n

But for a second, smaller group of younger companies, diversity channels seem to be swamped by London\u2019s\u00a0higher costs and greater competition. These firms perform better when in smaller, cheaper cities like Manchester or Birmingham. \u00a0In turn, that suggests policies to promote ethnic diversity in firms need to be quite carefully tailored to industry and local conditions.<\/p>\n

To read the full article, please follow the link here<\/a>, or here<\/a> for\u00a0the ungated\u00a0version.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A growing literature examines how ethnic diversity influences economic outcomes in cities and inside firms. However, firm\u2013city interactions remain more or less unexplored. A recent paper published by City REDI\u2019s Max Nathan provides new insights into the links between ethnic diversity and firm performance within different urban environments. The paper – published in\u00a0Environment and Planning … Continue reading “Research into ethnic diversity, firm performance and cities”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":68,"featured_media":114,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8,6,20],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-111","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-cities","category-economics","category-research"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.bham.ac.uk\/cityredi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/111","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.bham.ac.uk\/cityredi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.bham.ac.uk\/cityredi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.bham.ac.uk\/cityredi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/68"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.bham.ac.uk\/cityredi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=111"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blog.bham.ac.uk\/cityredi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/111\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":112,"href":"https:\/\/blog.bham.ac.uk\/cityredi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/111\/revisions\/112"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.bham.ac.uk\/cityredi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/114"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.bham.ac.uk\/cityredi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=111"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.bham.ac.uk\/cityredi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=111"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.bham.ac.uk\/cityredi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=111"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}