Measuring China's innovative capacity: a stochastic frontier exercise

We adopt a stochastic frontier analysis of innovative activity to disentangle countries’ patenting capacity from patenting efficiency. We analyse the determinants of innovative capacity of a set of 26 OECD countries plus China, over the period 1992–2007, to show if and how China's technological activity is growing faster than commonly held as compared to the most innovative countries of the world. Our results highlight that both internal and external elements jointly contribute to enhance countries’ innovative capacity and efficiency. In particular, while government-funded R&D is more important for innovative capacity, privately funded R&D as well as foreign direct investments (FDIs) affects technical efficiency (TE). Moreover, as for the whole set of countries, FDIs seem to exert a resource-seeking role (as they negatively affect TE), this does not happen for China, where FDIs exert a positive effect. Results are robust to the use of alternative measures of innovative inputs (such as higher education expenditure in R&D and R&D personnel, but also FDI flows rather than stocks). Finally, human capital measures are generally not very effective in enhancing patenting efficiency, apart from tertiary education.     

Corporate Sustainability and Ethical Codes Effectiveness

In the last years, the issues regarding both sustainable development and business global responsibility have qualified the corporate governance effectiveness. Many international institutions have intervened and the companies, at least formally, have increased their attention to the interaction between stakeholder relationship management and economic, social, and environmental responsibility. The numerous and frequent scandals underline the discrepancy between the firms＇ formal statements and the substantial behaviors. Most of the companies, in the industrialized country, publish well-structured code of ethics and conduct, explicating the strategic values assigned to the global responsibility. The research considers the capability of the code of conduct to influence effectively the behaviors, in relation with the needs of transparency, sharing, coherent individual behavior, and control. In relation to the importance conferred to the sustainable development by the European Union （EU）, the analysis examines listed companies with the greatest market capitalization operating in the Great Britain, Germany, and Italy, in order to verify the firms＇ behavioral uniformity and the effectiveness of sustainability policies. The analysis shows that the codes of ethics seem to remain only formal declarations. Conscious and rational governance not only transfers values and principles of sustainability to the firm＇s behaviors and its result system, but also goes beyond a mere diffusion and formalization of codes of ethics and conducts. To achieve that, it is necessary to develop productive behaviors focused on the risk control and on managing behaviors of all the organization＇s members, in particular in reference to the stakeholder relationship management. The codes of ethics, in fact, seem to assume a poor relevance for the corporate sustainability promotion if a correct formal structure does not occur integrated with strategies and processes which assure a constant workability. It requests especially： the ethic cu     

Validation study of a model for the assessment of potential in Italian Young Professionals working in medium-sized to large companies in different business sectors

The paper presents the results of a survey carried out on the potential profiles of 1,068 Italian Young Professionals coming out from Assessment Center and Development Center activities. A review carried out on a database of potential profiles made available by GSO, which has acknowledged the potential assessments conducted by 35 medium to large sized companies of 8 different business sectors (Banking, Publishing, Pharmaceutical, Large-scale distribution, Transports, Fashion and Luxury, Telecommunications, Energy) over ten years, showed that the potential assessment of Young Professionals was carried out by means of observation grids including from 15 to 20 different skills, reaching a total number of 48 skills evaluated in all the companies examined. The aim of this research is to achieve an assessment model that includes the smallest possible number of highly predictive potential skills, avoiding dispersions and redundancies in the assessment and maximizing the opportunities for the companies to make correct managerial choices when using potential data. The research has applied a series of statistical models (correlation, factor analysis and regression) in order to reduce the number of abilities and identify those that predict the overall performance. The results show that the number of “necessary” skills is below 10. Two assessment models have been obtained, one defined as Narrow (eight necessary skills) and another defined as Broad (14 skills, the necessary ones plus others considered as “secondary” but relevant).     

Trainees' reactions to training: an analysis of the factors affecting overall satisfaction with training

The study examines a relatively neglected, but important, aspect of the analysis and evaluation of training, namely trainees' immediate reaction to training. In particular, we focused on an analysis of the factors that affect participants' overall satisfaction with training. We first identified three key situational antecedents of training satisfaction, including trainees' perceptions of the efficiency and usefulness of the training, and their perceptions of trainer performance. Specific hypotheses relating each of these factors to training satisfaction were then developed and tested using data from a sample of about 3000 trainees from a range of Italian companies participating in a large-scale regionally-funded training programme involving over 300 different training courses. The results revealed that, although all three hypothesised antecedents were significantly positively related to training satisfaction, the perceived usefulness of training had the strongest effect. Importantly, the results also suggest the lack of any clear compensatory effects of the three antecedents on training satisfaction. Theoretical and policy implications of the findings are discussed.     

Analysis of drawdowns and drawups in the US$ interest-rate market

Abstract

By analysing a large data set of daily returns with the maximum likelihood data clustering technique, we identify economic sectors as clusters of assets with a similar economic dynamics. The sector size distribution follows Zipf's law. Secondly, we find that patterns of daily market-wide economic activity cluster into classes that can be identified with market states. The distribution of frequencies of market states shows scale-free properties and the memory of the market state process extends to long times (～50 days). Assets in the same sector behave similarly across states. We characterize market efficiency by analysing the market's predictability and find that the market is indeed close to being efficient. We find evidence of the existence of a dynamic pattern after the market's crashes.     

Nonlinear adjustment in US bond yields: An empirical model with conditional heteroskedasticity

Starting from the work by Campbell and Shiller (Campbell, J.Y. and Shiller, R.J. (1987). Cointegration and tests of present value models. Journal of Political Economy, 95(5):1062–1088.), empirical analysis of interest rates has been conducted in the framework of cointegration. However, parts of this approach have been questioned recently, as the adjustment mechanism may not follow a simple linear rule; another line of criticism points out that stationarity of the spreads is difficult to maintain empirically.     

Inequality,financialization, and economic decline

The objective of this article is to argue that the labor productivity slowdown experienced in recent years by several advanced countries can be explained, following a Kaldorian-Classical approach, by a weak gross domestic product (GDP) performance and by a decline in the wage share. Moreover, drawing inspiration from recent post Keynesian literature, the authors identify the ongoing worsening in income equality and the increase in the degree of financialization as other major explanatory factors of sluggish productivity. The article will provide a brief literature review concerning nonmainstream attempts to endogenize labor productivity, beginning from the famous Verdoorn-Kaldor law (Verdoorn, 1949 Verdoorn, P.J. “Fattori che Regolano lo Sviluppo della Produttività del Lavoro.” L’Industria, 1949, 1, March, 3–10. [Google Scholar]) and the Kaldor technical progress function (Kaldor, 1961 Kaldor, N. “Capital, Accumulation and Economic Growth.” In F.A. Lutz and D.C. Hague (eds.), The Theory of Capital. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1961, 177–222.[Crossref] , [Google Scholar]) and including Sylos Labini’s productivity equation (Sylos Labini, 1984 Sylos Labini, P. The Forces of Economic Growth and Decline. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1984. [Google Scholar], 1999 —. “The Employment Issues: Investment, Flexibility and the Competition of Developing Countries.” BNL Quarterly Review, 1999, 52 (10), 257–280. [Google Scholar]). The authors will then discuss how labor flexibility and shareholder value orientation, one of the main aspects of financialization, can negatively affect equality and labor productivity. Finally, they propose an extended version of the Sylos Labini’s equation, where productivity growth is claimed to depend positively on GDP rate of growth and the wage share, and negatively on income inequality and financialization. They submit to empirical scrutiny their extended productivity equation; the results of their estimations provide support to their theoretical argument.     

Strategic foresight in corporate organizations: Handling the effect and response uncertainty of technology and social drivers of change

Today many companies in many industries put a lot of efforts into monitoring and investigating emerging drivers of change in their business environment, particularly in relation to new technologies and events in the social, economic, political and ecological landscapes which surround their industry. So far scholars in the literature on foresight and future studies focused on the techniques and practices for analysing the “state” uncertainty about the likely path of evolution of emerging drivers of change. Anyway, less attention was devoted to the “effect” uncertainty about the impact of drivers of change on the competitive position of the firm and to the “response” uncertainty about how to take advantage of these drivers. These are the main issues we take into account, through a field research on firms that, notwithstanding they were able to properly assess the likely evolution (state uncertainty) of relevant drivers of change in their industry, either were successful or dramatically failed in handling the effect and response uncertainty of these drivers. Moreover, we carried out multiple case studies of some large companies that have established an organizational unit dedicated to strategic foresight. Overall, the results of our research may contribute to improve the effectiveness of strategic foresight and to increase its value added to the planning process of corporate firms, while providing helpful insight to public organizations that promote foresight exercises for enhancing the competitiveness of local firms.     

An integrated production–distribution model for the dynamic location and allocation problem with safety stock optimization

The design and management of a multi-stage production–distribution system is one of the most critical problems in logistics and in facility management. Companies need to be able to evaluate and design different configurations for their logistic networks as quickly as possible. This means coordinating the entire supply chain effectively in order to minimize costs and simultaneously optimize facilities location, the allocation of customer demand to production/distribution centers, the inbound and outbound transportation activities, the product flows between production and/or warehousing facilities, the reverse logistics activities, etc.Full optimization of supply chain is achieved by integrating strategic, tactical, and operational decision-making in terms of the design, management, and control of activities. The cost-based and mixed-integer programming model presented in this study has been developed to support management in making the following decisions: the number of facilities (e.g. warehousing systems, distribution centers), the choice of their locations and the assignment of customer demand to them, and also incorporate tactical decisions regarding inventory control, production rates, and service-level determination in a stochastic environment. This paper presents an original model for the dynamic location–allocation problem with control of customer service level and safety stock optimization. An experimental analysis identifies the most critical factors affecting the logistics cost, and to finish, an industrial application is illustrated demonstrating the effectiveness of the proposed optimization approach.