Firms’ growth: Does the innovation system matter?

The paper investigates the effects of external sources of knowledge on firm growth. In line with the knowledge spillovers literature, we focus on the relationship between firms and universities, considered as a crucial source of knowledge. To this purpose, we analyse a sample of UK public companies in the period 1995 to 2006. Our findings confirm that both universities’ knowledge input and output are important determinants of the growth of entrepreneurial firms.     

Pension Reform and Economic Performance Under Imperfect Capital Markets

We consider an overlapping generations model where heterogeneous agents take decisions on consumption and investment in education under the assumption of imperfect capital markets. We study how the introduction of a pay-as-you-go and of a fully funded pension scheme affects output and lifetime opportunities, and then analyse the impact of a pension reform. The standard neutrality result for fully funded pension schemes does not hold in this framework. We establish the conditions under which a fully funded scheme is associated with a higher investment in human capital. We show that the transition path may involve poverty traps     

Exploring the determinants of green bond issuance: Going beyond the long-lasting debate on performance consequences

In recent years, the need to create new financial tools to mobilize private capital and generate suitable resources to face both social and environmental challenges led to the development of new tools and ideas. In this context, green bonds have emerged as a new financial tool to better respond to sustainability themes. This study is the first attempt to explore in depth the determinants of green bond performance. We focused on three perspectives: the specific characteristics of projects financed through a green bond, the broader firm-specific corporate sustainability-oriented strategy of the firm, and a country-level perspective analyzing the country-specific determinants of green bond performance. To test the hypotheses a sample of 306 corporate green bonds issued by 85 companies and referring to 1,788 green projects between 2013 and 2016, were retrieved from the Bloomberg database. The results provide interesting theoretical and practical implications for green bond issuers as well as investors and governments interested in green bonds.     

Foreign Human Capital and Total Factor Productivity: A Sectoral Approach

We analyze the role of migrants in productivity growth in the three largest European countries—France, Germany and the United Kingdom—in the years 1994–2007, using Total Factor Productivity. Unlike previous research, which mainly employs a regional approach, our analysis is at the sectoral level: this allows to distinguish the real contribution of migrants to productivity from possible inter-sectoral complementarities, which might also foster growth. We control for the share of migrants and the different components of human-capital, such as education, age and diversity, and adopt instrumental variables strategies to address the possible endogeneity of migration. The results show that migrants contribute to the productivity of the sectors in which they are employed, but with important differences: highly-educated migrants show a larger positive effect in high-tech sectors, and to a lesser extent in services sector. The diversity of countries of origin contributes to productivity growth only in the services sectors.     

Likelihood,Replicability and Robbins' Confidence Sequences

The widely claimed replicability crisis in science may lead to revised standards of significance. The customary frequentist confidence intervals, calibrated through hypothetical repetitions of the experiment that is supposed to have produced the data at hand, rely on a feeble concept of replicability. In particular, contradictory conclusions may be reached when a substantial enlargement of the study is undertaken. To redefine statistical confidence in such a way that inferential conclusions are non-contradictory, with large enough probability, under enlargements of the sample, we give a new reading of a proposal dating back to the 60s, namely, Robbins' confidence sequences. Directly bounding the probability of reaching, in the future, conclusions that contradict the current ones, Robbins' confidence sequences ensure a clear-cut form of replicability when inference is performed on accumulating data. Their main frequentist property is easy to understand and to prove. We show that Robbins' confidence sequences may be justified under various views of inference: they are likelihood-based, can incorporate prior information and obey the strong likelihood principle. They are easy to compute, even when inference is on a parameter of interest, especially using a closed form approximation from normal asymptotic theory.     

Long-run consequences of finite exchange rate bubbles

This paper draws on the literature on exchange rate instability and on sunk-cost hysteresis to analyze the long-run effects of exchange rate bubbles. To address the issue, after discussing the implications of sunk-cost hysteresis for aggregate supply, we propose two versions of the Dornbusch (1976) model of exchange rate determination. We modify it so as to allow for endogenous adjustment in productive capacity, with the aggregate investment function being linear with respect to the exchange rate in one version and non-linear in the other. For both versions, we provide solutions for a Blanchard-type bubble developing on the foreign exchange market. We find that, if capacity adjusts non-linearly, such a bubble will affect the steady state of the economy.     

The hidden work of coping: gender and the micro-politics of household consumption in times of austerity

Abstract

This article explores the coping strategies of women in 10 middle-class Italian families facing economic crisis. We investigate food provision revealing the ceaseless extra work that goes into meal preparation. Adopting anthropological theories of thrift and sacrifice, we unpack participants’ micro-coping strategies, observing their tendency to redirect resources towards their loved ones and abnegating their own needs for the greater good of the family. This sacrifice is done out of necessity, reinforcing traditional gender inequalities in the home. However, there is also evidence that women take pride in their coping, developing new competencies and maintaining control over meal provision and thus the wider patterning of family life. We explore the significance of recessionary times for the constitution of female subjectivities at home.     

Properties of knowledge base and firm survival: Evidence from a sample of French manufacturing firms

The paper analyzes the effects of the properties of firms' knowledge base on the survival likelihood of firms. Drawing upon the analysis of the patterns of co-occurrence of technological classes in patent applications, we derive the coherence, variety and cognitive distance indexes, accounting respectively for technological complementarity, differentiation and dissimilarity in the firms' patent portfolios. The results of our analysis are in line with the previous literature, showing that innovation enhances the survival likelihood of firms. In addition, we show that the search strategies at work in the development of firms' knowledge base matter in reducing the likelihood of a failure event. Knowledge coherence and variety appear to be positively related to firms' survival, while cognitive distance exerts a negative effect. We conclude that firms able to exploit the accumulated technological competences have more chances to be successful in competing durably in the market arena, and derive some policy implications concerning the role of public intervention in the orientation of search efforts in local contexts.     

Do illegal migrants compete with national workers?

Conclusion  Some evidence regarding the effects of illegal or irregular immigrants on the receiving country's labour market is available but it is very limited considering the complexity entailed. It is clear that foreign irregular labour damages native workers more than regular foreign labour, but irregularity in employment is very difficult to pursue in countries with a large informal sector. Destination countries should first fight complete illegality in the country and in the job at any cost, and leave the labour office with the responsibility of providing incentives to get a legal job through frequent controls and high penalties.