Ethnic diversity and business performance: Which firms? Which cities?
研究族群多样性对企业绩效的影响，发现对大型知识密集型企业在伦敦、以及年轻小企业在二线城市有正向作用，使用潜在类别模型分析企业异质性。
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.