Inefficiency Spillovers in Five OECD Countries: An Interindustry Analysis

Empirical studies have widely demonstrated that real-world activities are rarely on their production frontier. Hence, an obvious concern arises towards the detection of inefficiencies affecting sectoral performances. The current literature and practice have widely explored the sources of inefficiency internal to decision-making units. This paper argues that a major role is played by external effects due to inefficiency spillovers propagating through interindustry transactions. In order to take this mechanism into account, the paper suggests assessing sectoral performances by a system approach that makes use of shadow prices of intermediate inputs. Our approach is able to disentangle sectoral inefficiencies into internal sectoral inefficiencies and inefficiencies imported from other sectors. The latter component is due to inefficiency spillovers that appear to be empirically relevant in all sectors of five OECD countries.     

Lettere al Direttore

Torino, 27 giugno 1984     

Principles of Policymaking in the European Union: An Economic Perspective

How should tasks be divided between the EU and its member states?And what institutional reforms are needed? This paper arguesthat the single market remains to be better enforced, and thismight require further centralisation of tasks. On the otherhand, EU meddling with redistribution should be scaled back;this would imply reducing EU intervention in agricultural policy,structural funds and the social charter. EU tasks should insteadbe expanded outside the first pillar, namely in foreign anddefence policies, internal security, immigration. The paperends by discussing what institutional reforms are needed toaccompany this allocation of tasks. (JEL F02, F3)     

Roadmapping for innovation management: evidence from Pirelli

Despite the growing interest of practitioners and scholars in technology roadmapping (TRM), our knowledge regarding how TRM can be embedded into the overall innovation process of a firm and used to enhance this process is relatively limited. This study aims to fill this gap. We describe an action research project conducted with Pirelli and the innovative approach to TRM this company developed during the 2010s to cope with the increasing complexity and dynamism of the tire industry. We show that TRM is currently fully integrated into the firm’s R&D activities and contributes to increasing the effectiveness of new product development. TRM supports the systematic gathering, sharing, and elaboration of information across the different functions and business units of Pirelli from the basic research to the commercialization of new products.     

Creativity over time and space

Creativity is often highly concentrated in time and space, and across different domains. What explains the formation and decay of clusters of creativity? We match data on notable individuals born in Europe between the eleventh and the nineteenth centuries with historical city data. The production and attraction of creative talent is associated with city institutions that protected economic and political freedoms and promoted local autonomy. Instead, indicators of local economic conditions such as city size and real wages, do not predict creative clusters. We also show that famous creatives are spatially concentrated and clustered across disciplines, that their spatial mobility has remained stable over the centuries, and that creative clusters are persistent but less than population.