Job protection legislation and productivity growth in OECD countries

We examine the effect of dismissal regulation on productivity in the OECD, using annual cross-country aggregate data on the stringency of employment protection legislation and industry-level data on productivity from 1982 to 2003. Our empirical results suggest that mandatory dismissal regulations have a depressing impact on productivity growth in industries where layoff restrictions are more likely to be binding. By contrast, we find no evidence of a productivity effect of regulations concerning temporary contracts, which suggests that partial reforms, facilitating the use of fixed-term and atypical contracts, are unlikely to have an important impact on efficiency and technological change and cannot therefore be a substitute for comprehensive reforms whereby dismissal restrictions for open-ended contracts are also weakened.
--- Andrea Bassanini, Luca Nunziata and Danielle Venn     

Managerialisation processes and performance in arts organisations: the Archaelogical Museum of Bologna

The extension of management discourse to public-sector entities in Italy comes up against a particularly interesting case in museums and art organisations. Here more than anywhere else, perhaps, the rhetoric of managerialisation faces serious problems in understanding the nature of such anomalous organisations, and defining frameworks for representing their performances. In such a context management knowledge often leads to radical conflicts with well established professional discourses (museology, museography, history of art, etc.). Rather than a simplistic, pre-defined and ready-to-use exercise in “performance valuation”, the article suggests a more modest approach, processual in nature, whereby performance representation is open to dialogue with the basic features of the substantive culture of the professionals and the central role they still occupy in the management of these kinds of organisation.     

The Bertrand Paradox,the Useless Auctioneer and the Launhardt Model

We revisit the Cournot–Bertrand debate in the light of Cournot, Edgeworth and Launhardt, tracing back to Launhardt the origin of price competition in duopoly models with constant returns to scale. Then, we discuss the formalisation of consumer utility function for differentiated products, first appearing in Launhardt and then in Bowley. This allows us to point out that assuming that firms know the demand function(s) is equivalent to assuming that they know the structure of consumer preferences. Therefore, we argue that there is no role for the auctioneer, either in Cournot or in Walras.     

SOCIAL COOPERATIVES IN ITALY: ECONOMIC ANTECEDENTS AND REGIONAL DISTRIBUTION

Social cooperatives represent the most notable form of non‐profit organizations operating in Italy in the social services field, the birth and development of which has been strongly linked to, and conditioned by, the needs and resources of territories and communities. This paper intends to demonstrate how certain socio‐economic factors, recognized in economic literature as antecedents of the development of social enterprises, may account for the spread of social cooperatives in different Italian regions. Furthermore, the research results demonstrate an inter‐regional differentiation of the shape social cooperation has entered into in Italy.     

Cloud computing in high tech startups: evidence from a case study

ABSTRACT

This paper focuses on the implementation of cloud-based systems in startups to answer how and why hi-tech startups use cloud computing, an overlooked question to date. Thus, referring to an extended version of Ross and Blumenstein [2015. “Cloud Computing as a Facilitator of SME Entrepreneurship.” Technology Analysis & Strategic Management 27 (1): 87–101] framework, encompassing issues of context and culture following Spanò et al. [2019. “Context, Culture and Control: A Case Study on Accounting Change in an Italian Regional Health Service.” Journal of Management and Governance. doi:10.1007/s10997-019-09458-0], we analyse cloud adoption in startup firms and rely upon a case study of an Italian hi-tech startup. The case study allowed us to tap into the main issues relating to cloud implementation that is increased opportunities, reduced costs, scalability, access to global markets, and access to international venture capital. The results offer interesting insights to the literature on cloud computing, and also have some managerial implications in that they better unfold the effects played by context and culture.     

CES and Translog parameter estimates in a SAM-based regional general equilibrium framework

The computation of General Equilibrium models crucially depends on Social Accounting Matrix (SAM)-based calibration and on how estimation/imputation are performed to reproduce the benchmark dataset as an equilibrium solution. In this paper, theoretical contributions are provided by suggesting a new procedure in which the production function parameters and the elasticity of substitution are estimated by resorting to the data contained in the SAM. To this aim, the Generalized Cross-Entropy estimator is used. Application of this self-contained procedure to the regional SAM for the Italian region Tuscany leads to empirical results consisting of the estimates of the elasticities of substitution of Constant Elasticity of Substitution and Translog production functions consistent with the theoretical background. This yields a more efficient and effective solution of Computable General Equilibrium models.     

Increasing inequality,consumer credit and financial fragility in an agent based macroeconomic model

We investigate the interplay between increasing inequality and consumer credit in a complex macroeconomic system with financially fragile heterogeneous households, firms and banks. Simulation results show that there are pros and cons of introducing consumer credit: on the one hand, for a certain time, it leads to lower unemployment through boosting aggregate demand; on the other hand, it accelerates the system tendency to the crisis. Since the increase of financial profits goes with a decline of households’ real wealth, a policy trade-off emerges.     

A model for R&D performance measurement

R&D activities are increasingly costly and risky and, as a consequence, measuring their performance and contribution to value becomes critical. This paper illustrates a formal model for measuring R&D performance, based upon a balanced and synthetic evaluation of quantitative indicators from five different perspectives of performance: financial, customer, innovation and learning, internal business, alliances, and networks. The model is built in coherence with the suggestions coming from the theory of measurement in soft systems, which gives relevant guidelines for ensuring validity, objectivity and inter-subjectivity of the model. Then, an application in a real R&D setting is described, which helps to understand the model and to enlighten its main advantages and limits.     

Ethnographic Case Study (ECS): Abductive modeling of ethnography and improving the relevance in business marketing research

By extending interpretative methods to business settings, this paper formalizes a model of Ethnographic Case Study (ECS) built upon extensive literature review and abductive elaboration of two-year fieldwork on 12 Italian companies. Objectives and related contributions are twofold. First, key compulsory and complementary stages of ECS marketing research are presented for business contexts. Second, the paper envisions the quality of the knowledge generated through the ECS inquiry, and argues that the methodological peculiarities of this approach may help reduce the relevance gap affecting business research. The systematic cooperation between researchers and practitioners along the ECS phases may benefit relevance through (i) the fine tuning of reciprocal expectations, (ii) the sharing of the research experience, (iii) the multiplication of the beneficiaries of the findings granted by ECS, and (iv) the participation in the process of knowledge dissemination. In this light, the ECS model supports the convincement that methods are not only a way to theory validation but also to theory discovery.