Counterfeiting and firm survival. Evidence from the Italian manufacturing industry

Using a dataset obtained by matching and merging three major databases, this paper investigates the impact of counterfeiting on firm survival in a sample of Italian manufacturing firms established between 2004-2006. This paper contributes to the literature on firm survival, which has identified firm-level characteristics, macroeconomic conditions and institutional features as key contributing factors to growth and survival probability among firms. The topic is hugely significant since this illegal competition may displace and damage the firms that produce genuine products. Overall, our analysis finds that the presence of counterfeit products negatively affects the chances of firms surviving. Moreover, after performing an in-depth analysis, we find that the presence of counterfeit products affects firms operating in lower tech sectors and smaller in size. Our evidence, which is robust to an alternative measure of counterfeiting and different estimation methods, provides room for policy interventions.