Vol.:(0123456789) Eurasian Economic Review https://doi.org/10.1007/s40822-018-0109-1 1 3 ORIGINAL PAPER Ownership structure and firm patenting activity in Italy Marianna Succurro 1  · Giuseppina Damiana Costanzo 2 Received: 6 December 2017 / Revised: 9 June 2018 / Accepted: 13 June 2018 © Eurasia Business and Economics Society 2018 Abstract This paper sheds light on firm-level heterogeneity in patent propensity by studying the relationship between ownership structure and patenting activity in Italian manu- facturing firms from 2006 to 2013. Both patent and accounting data are extracted from the Bureau van Dijk’s Orbis database. Our empirical findings show that owner- ship concentration increases the probability of successful patent applications, but at decreasing returns to scale. Moreover, there is a close association between several firm-level dimensions and innovative performance. Some differences arise when large firms and SMEs are examined separately, but the analysis as a whole would confirm the importance of ownership concentration for patenting activity. The empirical results hold also when the analysis explicitly deals with the endogeneity problem. Keywords Innovation · Patents · Ownership · Firm attributes · Logit JEL Classification C01 · D22 · G30 · L25 · L60 · O30 1 Introduction Innovation—a key determinant of firms’ performance—is at the basis of future eco- nomic growth, competitiveness, employment and ecological sustainability. As in the modern economy it emerges from a continuous interaction among firms, between firms and universities (so called universities’ third mission), suppliers, buyers, and external environment at sectoral, regional and national levels, there is an increasing * Marianna Succurro m.succurro@unical.it Giuseppina Damiana Costanzo dm.costanzo@unical.it 1 Department of Economics, Statistics and Finance “Giovanni Anania”, University of Calabria, Ponte Pietro Bucci, Cubo 0/C, 87036 Arcavacata di Rende, CS, Italy 2 Department of Business and Juridical Sciences, University of Calabria, Ponte Pietro Bucci, Cubo 1/C, 87036 Arcavacata di Rende, CS, Italy