Alessandro Fedele (p), Raffaele Miniaci

Simonetta Longhi

Nonprofit enterprises differ from for-profit firms at least along two dimensions: the stakeholder-oriented governance system and the nondistribution-of-profit constraint. In turn, these two dimensions can affect the firms' choice of capital structure. On these grounds, the paper investigates the role played by stakeholder orientation and nondistribution constraint in shaping capital structure differences between for-profits and nonprofits. We show that the stakeholder orientation positively affects firms' leverage, while the nondistribution constraint has a negative impact. We empirically investigate which effect dominates by studying the Italian social care sector, where for-profit and profit enterprises coexist and have similar market shares. The estimates of a partial adjustment dynamic model show that, ceteris paribus, the leverage of mature nonprofit enterprises is 8% to 14% lower than that of mature for-profit companies.

Simonetta Longhi (p)

Alessandro Fedele

Ethnic minorities receive on average lower wages than the (white) majority. Although minorities cluster in urban and more deprived areas, most analyses neglect the role of location. This paper contributes to the debate on the causes of ethnic wage differentials by comparing minorities to the majority in the same local labour market and therefore facing similar socio-economic conditions. The results suggest that ethnic wage differentials vary across areas and that their level and variability is mostly explained by occupational segregation within local labour markets. Policies aiming to reduce ethnic wage differentials should focus on occupational segregation within local labour markets.