Innovation as a nonlinear process,the scientometric perspective,and the specification of an ‘innovation opportunities explorer’

The process of innovation follows nonlinear patterns across the domains of science, technology, and the economy. Novel bibliometric mapping techniques can be used to investigate and represent distinctive, but complementary perspectives on the innovation process (e.g. ‘demand’ and ‘supply’) as well as the interactions among these perspectives using animations. In a map, the different perspectives can be represented as ‘continents’ of data related to varying extents over time. For example, the different branches of Medical Subject Headings (MeSH) in the Medline database provide sources of such perspectives (e.g. ‘Diseases’ vs ‘Drugs and Chemicals’). The multiple-perspective approach enables us to reconstruct facets of the dynamics of innovation, in terms of selection mechanisms shaping localisable trajectories and/or resulting in more globalised regimes. By expanding the data with patents and scholarly publications, we demonstrate the use of this multi-perspective approach in the case of RNA Interference (RNAi). The possibility to develop an ‘Innovation Opportunities Explorer’ is specified.     

Conception and test of a comprehensive model of international strategy for retail companies

Abstract

This article proposes a model of international strategy of retail companies. It has been developed and tested by studying the international activities, both successful and unsuccessful, of 37 international companies for more than a decade. It defines the most important components of a successful strategy and, for each component, it evaluates the importance of this variable in connection with the others. The model proposed is able not only to explain the internationalization process of many important companies during the 1990s and at the beginning of the 2000s, but also puts forward to the managerial sector the strategic variables for both the companies that have already started an internationalization process and those that wish to begin it.     

The Transfer Problem in the Euro Area

Building on the celebrated Keynes–Ohlin debate and on Lane and Milesi-Ferretti (Rev Econ Stat 86:841–857, 2004), the paper investigates the transfer problem for the Euro area vis-à-vis the rest of the world. The analysis is developed in a theoretically and statistically consistent way and is intended as a contribution to the empirical literature on EMU. The main result of the paper is that the accumulation of net foreign asset in the Euro area is consistent with real exchange appreciation, largely through the relative price of nontradables rather than through the terms of trade.

Interregional Migration of Human Capital and Unemployment Dynamics: Evidence from Italian Provinces

Since the mid‐1990s interregional migration flows in Italy have dramatically increased, especially from the South to the North. These flows are characterized by a strong component of human capital, involving a large number of workers with secondary and tertiary education. Using longitudinal data for the period 2002–2011 at NUTS‐3 territorial level, we document that long‐distance (i.e., South‐North) net migration of high‐skill workers has increased the unemployment at origin and decreased it at destination, thus deepening North–South unemployment disparities. On the other hand, long‐distance net migration of low‐skill workers has had the opposite effect, by lowering the unemployment at origin and raising it at destination. Further evidence also suggests that the diverging effect of high‐skill migration dominates the converging effect of low‐skill migration. Thus, concerns for an ‘internal brain drain’ from Southern regions look not groundless.     

The value of local political connections in a low-corruption environment

We use exogenous changes in Danish local municipality sizes to identify a large positive effect of political power on the profitability of firms related by family to local politicians. Our difference-in-differences estimate is consistent with a unitary elasticity of connected firms’ performance to political power (as measured by population per elected politician). Increasing power boosts firms’ operating returns, especially in industries relying heavily on public demand. Focusing on arguably the world's least corrupt country, we highlight the importance of corporate rent seeking at local governmental levels, which account for nearly half of total public expenditures.     

Systemic risk measurement: Multivariate GARCH estimation of CoVaR

We modify Adrian and Brunnermeier’s (2011) CoVaR, the VaR of the financial system conditional on an institution being in financial distress. We change the definition of financial distress from an institution being exactly at its VaR to being at most at its VaR. This change allows us to consider more severe distress events, to backtest CoVaR, and to improve its consistency (monotonicity) with respect to the dependence parameter. We define the systemic risk contribution of an institution as the change from its CoVaR in its benchmark state (defined as a one-standard deviation event) to its CoVaR under financial distress. We estimate the systemic risk contributions of four financial industry groups consisting of a large number of institutions for the sample period June 2000 to February 2008 and the 12 months prior to the beginning of the crisis. We also investigate the link between institutions’ contributions to systemic risk and their characteristics.     

CEO Succession Mechanisms,Organizational Context,and Performance: A Socio‐Emotional Wealth Perspective on Family‐Controlled Firms

This article extends the literature on CEO succession and financial performance by addressing corporate owners' mixed motives and desires to protect their interest in being in business. We draw on a Socio‐Emotional Wealth (SEW) perspective to investigate how the choice of one of three succession mechanisms – relay succession, ‘horse races’ among internal CEO candidates, and hiring from outside – may effectively balance trade‐offs between corporate owners' non‐financial SEW motives and the firm's financial performance. We find that implementing one of these succession mechanisms reduces the negative impact that typically characterizes CEO transitions in family firms. We also show that family presence on the board of directors offsets the benefits of having selected these balancing succession mechanisms, in either placing too much emphasis on SEW, or creating negative dynamics that make the chosen succession mechanisms less effective.     

Functional separability within a quadratic inverse demand system

In this paper, a quadratic inverse (almost ideal) demand system (IQUAIDS) is derived, that generalizes the inverse (almost ideal) demand system (IAIDS). Starting from a flexible parameterization of the distance function, this model allows a more flexible specification by overcoming the potential restrictiveness of linear scale curves. However, at a point of normalization, the IQUAIDS boils down to the IAIDS, thus the additional flexibility pertains only to the specification of scale elasticities away from the point of approximation. Previous work on functional separability is extended to the case of inverse demands, and necessary and sufficient conditions for weak separability of the direct and indirect utility function derived, in terms of the Antonelli elasticities of complementarity and of the scale elasticities. Their proper parametric representation within the inverse specification is also derived. An empirical application to fish demand in Italy is provided, mainly for illustrative purposes.