University IPRs and knowledge transfer: is university ownership more efficient?

This paper addresses an issue that has been largely ignored so far in the empirical literature on the role of patents in university–industry knowledge transfer: does it matter who owns the patents on university research? We observe that especially in Europe, many patents in which university researchers are listed as inventors are not owned by the university. From a literature review, we conclude that private ownership of university patents may reduce the efficiency of the knowledge transfer process. This hypothesis is put to an empirical test, using data on patents in six European countries. Specifically, we assess whether university-owned patents (in Europe) are more often applied, and/or more economically valuable, than university-invented (but not-owned) patents. Our results indicate that, after correcting for observable patent characteristics, there are only very small differences between university-owned and university-invented patents in terms of their rate of commercialization or economic value.     

The Economic Problem of Happiness: Keynes on Happiness and Economics

By stressing the substantial continuity of vision between John Maynard Keynes’s early unpublished essays and his more mature writings, the paper discusses Keynes’s ethics and focuses on his thoughts about happiness. In particular, we emphasize the anti-utilitarianism of Keynes’s vision and his belief that material wealth is but a precondition to enjoy the possibilities of a good life, and direct attention to problems of incommensurability raised by the multidimensional nature of happiness as considered by Keynes. We then argue that the rediscovery of Keynes’s legacy in this respect may be a precious counterweight to the most controversial aspects of today’s happiness research.     

Price collusion with free entry: the parasitic competition

The market equilibrium that is generated in the presence of both price collusion and free entry is analyzed taking under consideration the case of a homogeneous product and the case of differentiated products. The outcomes of this market regime are compared with those of other regimes, including competition (or monopolistic competition), monopoly, fixed price with collusive entry limitation. Some welfare implications of the market regime of price collusion with free entry are examined, with respect to the maximum social welfare allocation and the allocations of other market regimes, so to highlight the inefficiency of price collusion with free entry. The number of producers results to be the maximum number of firms that can produce without incurring into losses. Therefore, social distress is caused by a displacement from the price collusion equilibrium with free entry. Its defence can thus be considered in reference to the desirability of social goals that are in contradiction with economic efficiency.     

Circular economy and sustainability: The role of organizational behaviour in the transition journey

Implementing circular economy (CE) requires complex and dynamic changes in technical and behavioural aspects. Few studies spend efforts to understand the organizational behavioural side of CE transition. Thus, this study proposes a theoretical framework that addresses the requirements for the transition towards CE from the organizational perspective. We conducted a systematic review aiming to identify the relations between CE and organizational culture. As a result, we developed a theoretical framework composed of five building blocks (mindsets, values, behaviours, capabilities and competences) that guide the transition towards a CE-oriented culture aiming to achieve sustainability in business. We also identified several gaps for future researches. We concluded that the framework could enrich the literature discussion in the field and be used by practitioners for the identification of paths to implement CE from the organizational culture perspective. In addition, the use of this framework could lead to the achievement of the sustainable development.     

Personality and cognitive skills in network of friends,for multi-ethnic schools

In a multi-ethnic society, friendship among children might be expected to be overwhelmingly shaped by ethnicity and cultural heritage. Using an original panel data-set of classmate networks in multi-ethnic primary schools near Florence, Italy, ($N=396$ children in 2nd and 5th grade), we show instead that cognitive skills and personality traits matter as much as ethnicity in shaping friendships, thus playing the role of elective affinities. We test whether friends affect a child’s personality more than the other way round: to do this, we estimate peer effects. We only find non-significant effect of peers on math grades and a measure of intelligence (KBIT). For personality traits, peer effects are significant only for Extraversion. These findings are crucial for design of immigration policies: rather than emphasizing differences among ethnic groups, a farsighted policy could try to point these elective affinities among individuals.     

Keynes against Kalecki on economic method

In the past twenty years, there has been considerable debate on the “coherence” of post Keynesian economics, in view of post Keynesian economists’ ambitions to develop a paradigmatic alternative to neoclassical economics. Given the growing importance of methodological aspects in this discussion, this article addresses the differences of approach to economic theory between the fathers of the two most important strands in post Keynesian economics. We thus focus on Keynes’s criticism of Kalecki’s theory of the business cycle and the tensions between Keynes’s logical approach and Kaleki’s formal modeling. We show that in criticizing Kalecki’s theory, Keynes made use of the same methodological criticism (based on detecting logical fallacies in reasoning) he had employed to attack both the classical theory and contemporary “pseudo-mathematical” models. After illustrating these fundamental differences between Keynes and Kalecki about the proper way of doing economics, we draw some conclusions on the possible future evolution of post Keynesian economics.     

Zur Definition von Inflation und Deflation auf den Märkten bei entwickeltem Kredit

Ohne ZusammenfassungAus dem Italienischen übersetzt von Dr. Hans Emmer, Wien     

Risk allocation and uncertainty: some unpleasant outcomes of financial innovation

Financial innovation introduces the possibility of exchange on wider time-events sets. In this way, market incompleteness should be reduced with an overall advantage. The existence of this advantage also depends on other elements, like the degree of market competition, the level of information, and the presence of inefficiencies generated by moral hazard. One kind of behavior which has been widely common among banks consists in the reduction of risk taking in relation to credit activity. Credit risk tends to be covered through the packaging of credits into securities. This situation means that since the bank is not shouldering the risk, it does not invest in the acquisition of knowledge regarding the borrower, but only regarding his/her generic characteristics which are reflected in the evaluation of the assets in which the credits are packaged. Moreover, financial innovation was developed, in particular by investment banks, with non-standardized products, exchanged over-the-counter, and substantially lacking secondary markets. The greatest problems derive from the low liquidity of these products and from the uncertainty over their returns. This is why it would be good to stimulate the introduction of standardized products, whose risks are easy to determine, to be exchanged on organized markets, instead of complex products, which are substantially illiquid and exchanged over-the-counter.

Social welfare for an economy of angelic agents

This paper analyzes an economy in which all agents are pursuing the common good (or social welfare) but choices are decentralized, i.e., each agent can choose his/her action in the set of the actions that he/she can perform. One wonders if it is enough the common goal of maximizing social welfare to their will be achieved. The paper examines both the cases in which the choice made by each agent does not directly influence those of other agents, as in the competitive equilibrium analysis, and the case in which there is a direct influence, as in the game theory analyses. In the first case, we get that the common goal of maximizing social welfare is not enough to reach it, but it is necessary to coordinate the actions of individual agents by extending information to redistribute initial endowments and by introducing an appropriate social organization. We get the maximum social welfare without further intervention for the cases describable with the theory of games, but only for games of complete information. If the information is incomplete, some further coordination is generally required.     

Measuring relative non-motorized accessibility to retail activities

Accessibility planning is a crucial alternative to mobility planning for reaching sustainable outcomes. Although there is a vast literature on accessibility, less attention is paid to accessibility as a relative concept, i.e., its relationship with the socio-economic characteristic of the population. While accessibility is known to vary by location, it also changes as a consequence of differences in individual willingness to reach destinations by certain transport modes. Using the city of Zaragoza, Spain as a case study, this paper evaluates relative non-motorized accessibility (walking and cycling) to three types of retail activities: daily, weekly, and incidental. First, a clustering process is used to identify four population groups according to their socio-economic characteristics (the young employed; the young unemployed; seniors and adults). Second, distance-decay functions based on time-willingness to reach retail destinations by non-motorized modes are compared between the four clusters of population. Third, relative accessibility maps based on gravity-based models are elaborated, highlighting places that exhibit statistical differences between the population clusters. The results indicate that willingness to reach retail stores on foot by seniors (>65?years old) was significantly different from the rest of groups analyzed, providing additional insights on how relative accessibility measurements can anticipate potential social exclusion risks.