Family-managed firms and local export spillovers: evidence from Spanish manufacturing firms

By combining arguments from regional economics and family business research, the aim of this article is to test the relationships among local export spillovers, management characteristics, and export propensity on a large sample of Spanish manufacturing firms over the 2003–2015 period. We find that family-managed firms, compared to their non-family counterparts, benefit more from being located in regions with a high density of exporters. Because of their firm-specific social capital and strong embeddedness in local networks, family-managed firms are better positioned to leverage the spatially bounded flow of knowledge and information in these regions, resulting in a higher likelihood to export than non-family firms. Additionally, our results show that the knowledge spillover effect is stronger for small and low-tech family firms’ export propensity.