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...     

Evaluating Small Businesses' Performance in Public e‐Procurement: Evidence from the Italian Government's e‐Marketplace

e‐Procurement is widely advocated as an effective tool to promote the participation of small and medium enterprises (SMEs) as well as micro enterprises in the public procurement market. However, little evidence exists as to what factors may influence the allocation of contracts to differently sized suppliers. We address this issue by analyzing a rather rich and unique data set, namely the “direct award” (low‐value) transactions that took place on the Italian e‐marketplace during the period 2005–2010. In this paper, we exploit data from low‐value transactions to test the impact of different structural dimensions of the national public e‐marketplace on the probability that firms of different size are awarded public contracts, particularly focusing on micro and small firms. We find that both the nature of the public buyer and the characteristics of the traded goods/services do have an impact on different firms' ability to be awarded public contracts. We also test to what extent the geographical distance between public buyers and private suppliers explains the propensity of different size class of firms to be awarded public contracts, proving, at least to some extent, that some features of “physical” procurement markets are mirrored in the “virtual” market.     

Entry,trade costs,and international business cycles

Are firm entry and fixed exporting costs relevant for understanding the international transmission of business cycles? We revisit this question using a model that includes entry, selection to exporting activity, physical capital accumulation and endogenous labor supply. We determine that once the stochastic process for exogenous productivity is calibrated to consider the endogenous dynamics in TFP created by the number of firms and the time series volatility of entry is calibrated to the data, our model yields minimal departures from the Backus et al. (1992) benchmark. The richer model shares all of the successes of the previous model in terms of the volatilities of aggregate quantities, as well as its failures, in terms of replicating patterns of international co-movement and the volatility of international relative prices.     

Expectations,network effects and timing of technology adoption: some empirical evidence from a sample of SMEs in Italy

We provide evidence on the influence of expectations and network effects on the timing of technological adoption. By considering a sample of SMEs operating in Italy, we focus on the determinants of their decision to adopt Fast Ethernet, a communication standard for Local Area Networks (LANs). We find that both expectations and network effects significantly affect the timing of adoption. In particular, price expectations generally tend to delay adoption and (indirect) network effects in the form of backward compatibility as well as informational spillovers tend to foster adoption. Firm size also matters.

Income Distribution and Monopoly: Price and Quantity Patterns with Intra‐ and Inter‐class Income Dispersion

We analyze the direction of the co‐movements of price and output in a monopolistic market when an expansive shock occurs. Price and quantity patterns are shown to depend on the consumers' income distribution. In particular, a low degree of income dispersion is associated with price and quantity reacting in opposite directions to demand shocks.     

“Set a Sufficiently Ambitious Budget Target and Let the Automatic Stabilizers Work”. Will it Really Work in the European Monetary Union?

We examine the popular recipe in the title by means of an AD-LM-AS two-country model of the EMU, controlling for asymmetry in demand and supply shocks and in the monetary-policy transmission mechanism. Unless structural symmetry holds and symmetric shock occurs, national automatic stabilizers, even though supplemented with the common monetary policy, cannot deliver optimal stabilization in each economy. Inflation and output gaps are not closed and may be divergent in sign. Considering that a federal system of inter-regional insurance is lacking, the recipe under examination is too optimistic, while serious threat to EMU cohesion may arise. The econometric estimates we present show that existing national fiscal systems work very poorly as for the minimization, after shocks, of the dispersion of national incomes around the EMU average.     

Applications of parameters of shape to statistical distributions

Several new parameters characterizing the shape of statistical distributions are discussed. These parameters have earlier been considered for characterization of the shape of territories. By means of these parameters we describe general spread and spread along the axes, as well as asymmetry, of univariate theoretical and empirical distributions. General formulas for the parameters are given, and the particular formulas for the most of the common theoretical distributions are also listed. Some numerical values are tabulated, to illustrate their usefulness. Affine transformations are considered, and many applications and extensions are hinted upon.     

Effects of redistributing policy support on farmers’ technical efficiency

The objective of this article is twofold: first, investigating the relationship between technical efficiency and decoupled direct payments of a sample of Italian farms prior to the application of the 2014–2020 Common Agricultural Policy reform; second, evaluating possible implications of alternative scenarios about distribution of direct payments on technical efficiency. To these aims, a stochastic frontier analysis is adopted. Results indicate that direct payments produce significant effects on technical efficiency in specialized farms, which received higher levels of support. However, effects are contrasting. Moreover, results show that redistribution of policy subsidies may negatively impact on technical efficiency to an extent depending upon the criterion of redistribution applied. Finally, some policy suggestions are given.