Venture Capital Investments in Europe and Portfolio Firms' Economic Performance: Independent Versus Corporate Investors

Using a new European Commission‐sponsored longitudinal dataset—the VICO dataset—we assess the impact of independent (IVC) and corporate venture capital (CVC) investments on the economic performance of European high‐tech entrepreneurial firms during the period 1992–2010. After controlling for potential sources of endogeneity and selection bias, our results indicate that both IVC and CVC investments boost portfolio firms' economic performance. These effects are mostly due to an increase in real sales value. Moreover, the dynamics of the impact of VC investments on firms’ overall economic performance and its components—real sales value, real fixed assets, and real labor costs—differs depending on the type of investor. Finally, we do not detect any impact related to the syndication of investments by both IVC and CVC investors.     

Investments in worker health and production: Evidence from Vietnam

In manufacturing industries, occupational health and safety measures ensure better working conditions for employees, which may influence their productivity. We study the impact of investments undertaken by small and medium enterprises in Vietnam in mitigating indoor pollution (including air quality improvements, heat and noise protection as well as lighting) on firm-level gross output and value added. We find that the amount invested by the firm in health has a significant positive effect on both outcomes. Given historically poor working conditions in Vietnam, policy implications relate to incentivizing and enabling firms to undertake such investments, on both moral and economic grounds.     

The Core of Large Differentiable TU Games

For suitable non-atomic TU games ν, the core can be determined by computing appropriate derivatives of ν, yielding one of two stark conclusions: either core(ν) is empty or it consists of a single measure that can be expressed explicitly in terms of derivatives of ν. In this sense, core theory for a class of games may be reduced to calculus. Journal of Economic Literature Classification Number: C71.     

Modeling hard and soft facts for SMEs: Some international evidence

This paper asks how well the use of quantitative and qualitative variables can improve the assessment of companies' creditworthiness and how this result can be influenced by the economic and financial peculiarities of countries. We harden qualitative variable measures to model soft information aimed at scoring microfirms, small, and medium‐sized firms. The structural survey covers Germany, Italy, and the UK in a sample of about 17 thousand companies observed during the financial crisis. Soft facts are determined within the balanced scorecard framework in order to find out the impact of customers, business processes, learning and growth, and financial perspectives. Our findings show that credit models integrating soft variables optimize the risk estimation, but estimates are country‐specific and should be tailored to the characteristics of each economic system.     

Alternative econometric implementations of multi-factor models of the U.S. financial markets

This paper analyzes the empirical performance of two alternative ways in which multi-factor models with time-varying risk exposures and premia may be estimated. The first method echoes the seminal two-pass approach introduced by Fama and MacBeth (1973). The second approach is based on a Bayesian latent mixture model with breaks in risk exposures and idiosyncratic volatility. Our application to monthly, 1980–2010 U.S. data on stock, bond, and publicly traded real estate returns shows that the classical, two-stage approach that relies on a nonparametric, rolling window estimation of time-varying betas yields results that are unreasonable. There is evidence that most portfolios of stocks, bonds, and REITs have been grossly over-priced. On the contrary, the Bayesian approach yields sensible results and a few factor risk premia are precisely estimated with a plausible sign. Predictive log-likelihood scores indicate that discrete breaks in both risk exposures and variances are required to fit the data.     

Global networks of trade and bits

Considerable efforts have been made in recent years to produce detailed topologies of the Internet, but so far these data have been overlooked by economists. In this paper, we suggest that such information could be used to characterize both the size of the digital economy and outsourcing at country level. We analyse the topological structure of the network of trade in digital services (trade in bits) and compare it with the more traditional flow of manufactured goods across countries. To perform meaningful comparisons across networks with different characteristics, we define a stochastic benchmark for the number of connections among each country-pair, based on hypergeometric distribution. Original data are filtered so that we only focus on the strongest, i.e. statistically significant, links. We find that trade in bits displays a sparser and less hierarchical network structure, which is more similar to trade in high-skill manufactured goods than total trade. Moreover, distance plays a more prominent role in shaping the network of international trade in physical goods than trade in digital services.     

Problemi di minimax di tipo discreto: Un approccio unificato mediante il teorema dell'alternativa di Motzkin

Si dimostrano delle condizioni del primo ordine, alcune necessarie e altre sufficienti per problemi di minimax di tipo discreto, utilizzando prevalentemente il teorema dell'alternativa di Motzkin.

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In this paper discrete minimax problems are considered.Some first order optimality conditions for minimax problems in hypothesis of different kind about the set of constraints are proved.We don't suppose that the set is convex, as treated by V. F. Dem'yanov and V. M. Malozemov.For the proofs it has often been used the alternative Motzkin's theorem.

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Pervenuto il 28-3-82

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Lavoro eseguito nell'ambito del progetto di ricerca «Equilibrio in modelli matematici con aspettative razionali».     

The Determinants of Organizational Change and Structural Inertia: Technological and Organizational Factors

There are a growing body of theoretical work, wide anecdotal evidence, and a few large-scale empirical studies supporting the view that business firms quite rarely change their organizational structure, a phenomenon usually referred to in the literature as structural inertia. The present paper aims to analyze empirically the determinants of structural inertia and organizational change. As far as we know, this work constitutes the first attempt to directly address such issues through econometric estimates based on a large, longitudinal dataset at plant level. For this purpose, we consider changes of the organizational structure within a sample composed of 438 Italian manufacturing plants observed from 1975 to 1996. More precisely, we specify and test a duration model of the likelihood of an individual plant changing the number of hierarchical tiers after a spell r, provided that no change has occurred up to T. We also analyze the direction of change, distinguishing increases from decreases of the number of managerial layers. We consider a set of plant- and industry-specific explanatory variables that are expected to induce or oppose organizational change. The findings show that the adoption of advanced manufacturing technologies and new human-resources management practices favors organizational change. On the contrary, the presence of sunk costs and the extent of influence activities figure prominently in explaining structural inertia of business organizations.     

The future of new religions

The category of “new religions” is somewhat controversial, but fringe minorities remain an interesting starting point in order to assess the future of religion. Contrary to what many expected in the 1970s, interest in religion in general has not declined in the Western world, organized religion has not disappeared, and we have not witnessed an explosion of “cults”. Learning from these past sociological prophecies that failed, we may speculate on the future in more realistic terms. New religious movements will not disappear, but they will not meet with an exceptional success either, this paper predicts, because models marginalizing them as based on brainwashing or being a form of religious kitsch, although criticized within the academic community, serve a basic psycho-cultural need of explaining away unpopular choices of our fellow human beings, and will probably not disappear from popular and media prejudice.     

Procyclical Productivity and Output Growth in China: An Econometric Analysis

This paper analyzes the procyclical behavior of Chinese Total Factor Productivity (TFP). It shows that measured Solow residuals are correlated to the growth rate of real imports per worker and to other macroeconomic variables that fluctuate at cyclical frequencies. The magnitude of the trend shift in TFP after the start of economic reforms in 1978 is found to be robust to the introduction of cyclical factor utilization and other systematic influences on productivity. The propagation mechanisms of macroeconomic shocks to output are also evaluated on the basis of a seven-variable VAR system. The empirical results indicate that the growing openness of the economy has contributed to sustaining the observed long run productivity increases and has raised spatial inequality.