Ethnic diversity and business performance: Which firms? Which cities?
A growing literature examines how ethnic diversity influences economic outcomes in cities and inside firms. However, firm?city interactions remain more or less unexplored. Ethnic diversity may help firm performance by introducing a wider range of ideas, improving scrutiny or improving international market access. Urban locations may amplify in-firm processes via agglomeration economies, externalities from urban demography or both. These firm?city effects may be more beneficial for knowledge-intensive firms, and for young firms with a greater dependence on their environment. However, firm?city 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 data to explore these issues within firms? `top teams?, using latent class analysis to tackle firm-level heterogeneity. I find positive diversity?performance links for larger, knowledge-intensive firms, and positive firm?city interactions both for larger, knowledge-intensive firms in London and for younger, smaller firms in second-tier metros. ? 2016, ? The Author(s) 2016.
1 December 2016
Environment and Planning A 48(12) , pp.2462-2483, 2016
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0308518X16660085
This Journal article is published under the centre's Urban programme.