Social networks and labour productivity in Europe: an empirical investigation

This paper uses firm-level data recorded in the AMADEUS database to investigate the distribution of labour productivity in different European countries. We find that the upper tail of the empirical productivity distributions follows a decaying power-law, whose exponent a is obtained by a semi-parametric estimation technique recently developed by Clementi et al. [Physica A 370(1): 49-53, 2006]. The emergence of "fat tails" in productivity distribution has already been detected in Di Matteo et al. [Eur Phys J B 47(3): 459-466, 2005] and explained by means of a model of social network. Here we show that this model is tested on a broader sample of countries having different patterns of social network structure. These different social attitudes, measured using a social capital indicator, reflect in the power-law exponent estimates, verifying in this way the existence of linkages among firms' productivity performance and social network.