The role of human capital in identifying the drivers of product and process innovation: empirical investigation from Italy

Quality & Quantity - Economists recognize that the local availability of higher human capital represents significant knowledge spillovers, especially for innovation process. This research...     

Measuring Efficiency in Higher Education: An Empirical Study Using a Bootstrapped Data Envelopment Analysis

This paper applies data envelopment analysis (DEA) to assess technical efficiency in a big public university. Particular attention has been paid to two main activities, teaching and research, and on two large groups, the Science and Technology (ST) sector and the Humanity and Social Science (HSS) sector. The findings, based to data from 2005 to 2009, suggest that the ST sector is more efficient in terms of quality of research than the HSS sector, that instead achieves higher efficiency in teaching activities. The efficiency estimates strongly depend on the output specification, given that the use of several quality proxies, such as three research and two student questionnaire-based teaching alternative indices, reduce performance and its differentials for both research and teaching activities. A bootstrap technique is also used to provide confidence intervals for efficiency scores and to obtain bias-corrected estimates. The Malmquist index is calculated to measure changes in productivity.     

On the relationship among efficiency,capitalization and risk: does management matter in local banking market?

By employing a Granger causality methodology in a panel data framework, this article explores the relationship among efficiency, capitalization and credit risk within the local Italian banking system. Focusing the attention on cooperative banks, we specifically test whether managers take more risks in highly concentrated markets (i.e. monopoly) than in partially competitive markets (i.e. duopoly). The evidence shows that in more concentrated markets, management efficiency generates a decrease in risk-taking (rejecting the bad management hypothesis) with respect to the partially competitive markets. Results are consistent with the idea that banks with less local competition are able to increase their profits by indulging more freely in rent-seeking behaviour, minimizing their risk-taking and, consequently, improving the quality of their assets through additional screening processes. The financial crisis does not seem to affect the conduct of management in terms of bank investment decisions and risk-taking. A series of robustness tests generally confirms our findings.     

Market Structure and Financial Stability: the Interaction between Profit-Oriented and Mutual Cooperative Banks in Italy

Journal of Financial Services Research - In this study, we analyze the relation between market structure and financial stability both theoretically and empirically by considering two types of...     

Innovation and University‐Firm R&D Collaboration in the European Food and Drink Industry

In the National Innovation System (NIS), knowledge is produced and accumulated through interactive innovation processes that are embedded in a national context, which in turn may help determine innovation. This paper investigates how product and process innovations in the European food and drink industry are affected by: (i) NIS structure; (ii) NIS output in terms of scientific publications and the supply of graduates; (iii) NIS cohesion and coordination; (iv) NIS scientific impact and specialisation. The main source of data on innovation by firms is the EU‐EFIGE/Bruegel‐UniCredit dataset. This is supplemented by information from the International Handbook of Universities, Eurostat and a bibliometric analysis of academic research output. Our results suggest that large research institutions in the public sector may well be detrimental to interaction between university and industry and to process innovation. The indicators used for public research assessment are not necessarily the most appropriate proxies of local knowledge spillovers.     

Managerial Efficiency in Higher Education Using Individual Versus Aggregate Level Data. Does the choice of Decision Making Units Count?

This paper explores the use of a data envelopment analysis approach to decompose student's under‐attainment in a part attributable to the Faculties they are enrolled in and a part attributable to the students themselves. The mean measure of each Faculty's teaching efficiency is calculated using both individual and aggregate data. The results show that efficiency measures at aggregate level reflect both the student's effort and the characteristics of the institution to which they belong, suggesting that they might lead to ambiguous results. The estimates also reveal that Faculties need to stimulate their student's effort in order to perform better. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Short- and long-term relation between economic development and government spending: the role of quality of institutions

ABSTRACT

This paper tests the Wagner’s assumption of the one-sided directional flow moving from economic growth to public spending considering an international database over the 1996–2012 period. By using indicators on the level of country control of corruption, government effectiveness, political stability, rule of law, regulatory quality and voice and accountability, the paper analyses the economic performance-public spending nexus controlling for the quality of the institutions. The empirical evidence supports the existence of the Wagner’s law, showing that, in the short-run, public spending positively reacts to a positive shock in national income, with a lower magnitude for democratic countries. In the long run, the error-correction model shows the convergence between public spending and national output occurring less quickly for non-democratic, low-income and to a smaller extent for non-OECD countries. Institutional quality, such as effort in controlling corruption and the presence of regulations that permit and promote private sector development, may help reducing the amount of per capita public spending and making it more productive. Higher expenses in compositional amenities such as public services for the elderly may explain why public spending per capita will increase the most in economies with a higher share of the population that need healthcare facilities.     

The Incidence of Social Security Contributions in the United Kingdom: Evidence from Discontinuities at Contribution Ceilings

This paper investigates the incidence of National Insurance contributions (NICs) in the UK, exploiting the ceiling that applied to employee and employer contributions between 1975 and 1985 and to employee contributions only between 1986 and 2007. Using data from the New Earnings Survey Panel Dataset, a mandatory survey of British employers’ payroll records, we show there was no dip in the earnings density at the ceiling in either period, suggesting that the earnings of those near the ceiling were unresponsive to the change in tax rates. The absence of such a dip allows us to test which of labour cost, gross earnings or net earnings are smooth around the threshold. As shown by Alvaredo et al. (De Econ, 2017. doi: 10.1007/s10645-017-9294-7), this is informative about the incidence of the change in tax rates at the threshold on those located nearby. We cannot reject the hypothesis that it is gross earnings that are smooth around the threshold, which may reflect a substantive role for statutory incidence in determining economic incidence. However, a lack of statistical power means that, while in some cases we can reject the hypotheses that the full economic incidence of NICs are borne by one side of the market, our results taken alone are also consistent with a wide range of less extreme incidence shares.     

Joint Bayesian Analysis of Parameters and States in Nonlinear non‐Gaussian State Space Models

We propose a new methodology for designing flexible proposal densities for the joint posterior density of parameters and states in a nonlinear, non‐Gaussian state space model. We show that a highly efficient Bayesian procedure emerges when these proposal densities are used in an independent Metropolis–Hastings algorithm or in importance sampling. Our method provides a computationally more efficient alternative to several recently proposed algorithms. We present extensive simulation evidence for stochastic intensity and stochastic volatility models based on Ornstein–Uhlenbeck processes. For our empirical study, we analyse the performance of our methods for corporate default panel data and stock index returns. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Did fiscal institutions affect Wagner’s law in Italy during 1951–2009 period? An empirical analysis

In this article, we test Wagner’s assumption of the one-sided directional flow moving from economic growth to public spending in Italy for the 1951–2009 period. We pay particular attention to the impact of certain regime shifts related to changes in Italian budget regulations and procedures and the relevance of fiscal institutions to the fiscal performance equation, i.e. the public spending–national income nexus. The Error Correction Model is estimated to measure short-run dynamic effects and the long-run equilibrium between the two time series. The empirical evidence suggests that Wagner’s law is supported. In regard to policy implications, we find that public spending reacted less to positive changes in economic growth when the strengthening of the Ministry of Finance occurred in 1997 (Ciampi’s reform). Some sensitivity analyses confirm our empirical evidence.