Simplified Jackknife Variance Estimates for Fuzzy Measures of Multidimensional Poverty

In this paper, we present a practical methodology for variance estimation for multi‐dimensional measures of poverty and deprivation of households and individuals, derived from sample surveys with complex designs and fairly large sample sizes. The measures considered are based on fuzzy representation of individuals' propensity to deprivation in monetary and diverse non‐monetary dimensions. We believe this to be the first original contribution for estimating standard errors for such fuzzy poverty measures. The second objective is to describe and numerically illustrate computational procedures and difficulties in producing reliable and robust estimates of sampling error for such complex statistics. We attempt to identify some of these problems and provide solutions in the context of actual situations. A detailed application based on European Union Statistics on Income and Living Conditions data for 19 NUTS2 regions in Spain is provided.     

Exploring how innovation strategies at time of crisis influence performance: a cluster analysis perspective

This paper analyzes the connection between innovation activities of companies – implemented before crisis – and their performance – measured at time of crisis. The companies listed in the STAR Market Segment of the Italian Stock Exchange are analyzed. Innovation is measured through the level of investments in total tangible and intangible fixed assets in 2006–2007, while performance is captured through growth – expressed by variations of sales, total assets and employees – profitability – through ROI or ROS – and productivity – through asset turnover or sales per employee in the period 2008–2010. The variables of interest are analyzed and compared through statistical techniques and by adopting cluster analysis. In particular, a Voronoi tessellation is also implemented in a varying centroids framework. In accord with a large part of the literature, we find that the behaviour of the performance of the companies is not univocal when they innovate.     

The role of industry variety in the creation of innovative start-ups in Italy

Small Business Economics - This paper aims to ascertain whether related and unrelated industry variety affects the creation of innovative as opposed to other start-ups in Italian local labor market...     

IS A SOCIAL EMPOWERMENT OF PPP FOR INFRASTRUCTURE DELIVERY POSSIBLE? LESSONS FROM SOCIAL IMPACT BONDS

Social Impact Bonds (SIBs) have emerged in recent years as outcome‐based public‐private partnerships (PPP) for the delivery of welfare services, where the payment to the private operator is linked to the achievement of superior social impact. Since the traditional infrastructure‐based PPP approach seems to have failed to achieve higher level of efficiency and, above all, effectiveness, this paper discusses the extent to which the SIB model can represent a reference point to innovate the PPP model by introducing more focus on outcome achievement and social value generation.     

Punishing Vices or Rewarding Virtues? The Motivations for and Benefits of Ethical Ratings for Private Italian Companies

Journal of Business Ethics - In A Treatise on Virtues and Rewards, Dragonetti (1769) advances a theory of action based on rewards for virtues. The idea of rewards, especially of awards, relies on...     

Do data policy restrictions impact the productivity performance of firms and industries?

This paper examines how policies regulating the cross‐border movement and domestic use of electronic data on the internet impact the productivity of firms in sectors relying on electronic data. In doing so, we collect regulatory information on a group of developed economies and create an index that measures the regulatory restrictiveness of each country's data policies. The index is based on observable policy measures that explicitly inhibit the cross‐border movement and domestic use of data. Using cross‐country firm‐level and industry‐level data, we analyse econometrically the extent to which these data regulations over time impact the productivity performance of downstream firms and industries, respectively. We show that stricter data policies have a negative and significant impact on the performance of downstream firms in sectors reliant on electronic data. This adverse effect is stronger for countries with strong technology networks, for servicified firms, and holds for several robustness checks.     

Board diversity reforms: Do they matter for EU bank performance?

We examine the impact of governance reforms related to board diversity on the performance of European Union banks. Using a difference‐in‐difference approach, we document that reforms increase bank stock returns and their volatility within the first 3 years after their enactment. The type of reform matters, with quotas increasing return volatility. The effectiveness of reforms depends on a country's institutional environment. The impact of reforms on return volatility is found to be beneficial in countries more open to diversity, with common law system and with greater economic freedom. Finally, reforms play a bigger role in banks that have ex ante less heterogeneous boards.     

Defending Gibrat’s Law as a long-run regularity

According to Gibrat’s Law of Proportionate Effect, the growth rate of a given firm is independent of its size at the beginning of the period examined. While earlier studies tended to confirm the Law, more recent research generally rejects it. This article reconciles these two streams of literature, taking into account the role of market selection and learning in reshaping a given population of firms through time. Consistently with previous studies, we find that Gibrat’s Law has to be rejected ex ante, since smaller firms tend to grow faster than their larger counterparts. However, a significant convergence toward Gibrat-like behavior can be detected ex post. This finding is an indication that market selection “cleans” the original population of firms, so that the resulting industrial “core” does not depart from a Gibrat-like pattern of growth. From a theoretical point of view, this result is consistent with those models based on passive and active learning, and can be seen as a defense of the validity of the Law in the long-run.

The Value of Transferable Skills

Most studies on skill transferability focus on the return to capabilities developed in the initial job and disregard the different characteristics of the origin and the destination industries. In contrast, this article assesses the borders of skill transferability by comparing the return to skills for firm stayers, firm changers in the same industry, and firm changers to other industries. Based on a sample of Portuguese employees in retail banking, our results confirm significant inter‐firm and inter‐industry skill transferability. Difference‐in‐differences estimates with propensity score matching show that firm switchers benefit from a wage premium compared to firm stayers. However, the wage premium drops sharply when movers leave the banking sector.     

A unified approach to systemic risk measures via acceptance sets

We specify a general methodological framework for systemic risk measures via multidimensional acceptance sets and aggregation functions. Existing systemic risk measures can usually be interpreted as the minimal amount of cash needed to secure the system after aggregating individual risks. In contrast, our approach also includes systemic risk measures that can be interpreted as the minimal amount of cash that secures the aggregated system by allocating capital to the single institutions before aggregating the individual risks. An important feature of our approach is the possibility of allocating cash according to the future state of the system (scenario‐dependent allocation). We also provide conditions that ensure monotonicity, convexity, or quasi‐convexity of our systemic risk measures.