Combined permutation test on the effect of age of micro enterprises on the propensity to Circular Economy

Circular Economy (CE) is emerging as a possible strategy that companies might adopt to engage with environmental sustainability changes. An interesting hypothesis concerns the effect of companies' age on the propensity of micro enterprises to undertake CE activities. Among the main difficulties to test this hypothesis, there are the , multidimensional nature of the concept of CE, the small number of observations and the unbalanced sample sizes, typical situations of the empirical studies on this topic. We propose a solution based on a combined permutation test. Through a Monte Carlo simulation study, we investigate the power of this test. Finally, we consider a case study concerning Italian companies in the metal sector.