The role of industry variety in the creation of innovative start-ups in Italy

Small Business Economics - This paper aims to ascertain whether related and unrelated industry variety affects the creation of innovative as opposed to other start-ups in Italian local labor market...     

Applications of parameters of shape to statistical distributions

Several new parameters characterizing the shape of statistical distributions are discussed. These parameters have earlier been considered for characterization of the shape of territories. By means of these parameters we describe general spread and spread along the axes, as well as asymmetry, of univariate theoretical and empirical distributions. General formulas for the parameters are given, and the particular formulas for the most of the common theoretical distributions are also listed. Some numerical values are tabulated, to illustrate their usefulness. Affine transformations are considered, and many applications and extensions are hinted upon.     

Shadow economy and unemployment rate in USA: is there a structural relationship? An empirical analysis

This article aims to estimate the size of the US shadow economy (SE) using a structural equation approach and to evaluate if a structural relationship exists between the SE and the unemployment rate (UR) in the United States. The size of the SE is estimated to be decreasing over the last two decades. We corroborate the existence of a structural relationship between the SE and the UR by using a simple theoretical model. Furthermore, we extend the Okun's law to estimate the structural relationship between growth rate of official GDP, SE and UR. Our results indicate a significant positive relationship between the SE and the UR.     

Short- and long-run heterogeneous investment dynamics

In this paper, we model the dynamics of business investment taking into account asset-specific characteristics potentially affecting the reactivity of aggregate and disaggregate capital accumulation over the business cycle. We estimate Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) and traditional investment (non-ICT) determinants within a Vector Error Correction Model testing the assumptions of the flexible accelerator and neoclassical model as well as the role of financial constraints and uncertainty. We evaluate our model on Italian data over the period 1980–2012, and we check our results also with Spanish and UK data. Our findings support the assumption that capital is heterogeneous since short- and long-run determinants are significantly different across the assets. Traditional assets experience stock adjustment costs while ICT investment incurs flow adjustment cost. In the short run, liquidity is a key determinant of investment independently of the asset type. In the long run, uncertainty significantly affects ICT. Finally, the results of the counterfactual exercises support the idea that ICT is a key policy variable to foster economic growth.     

Correcting for the endogeneity of pro-environment behavioral choices in contingent valuation

In contingent valuation studies, observed behavioral choices often enter as independent variables in the willingness to pay function. However, these variables may be endogenously determined when the error term in the behavioral model is correlated with the error term in the willingness to pay model. We investigate the effects of correcting for the endogeneity of a variable, namely membership status in environmental organizations that proxies unobservable characteristics of the respondents. Jointly modeling the membership variable and the willingness to pay response yields an estimate for the effect of the former that contradicts previous findings but is intuitive and agrees with theoretical expectations.     

Schumpeterian patterns of innovation and the sources of breakthrough inventions: evidence from a data-set of R&D awards

This paper examines the relationship between Schumpeterian patterns of innovation and the generation of breakthrough inventions. Our data source for breakthrough inventions is the “R&D 100 awards” competition organized each year by the magazine Research & Development. Since 1963, this magazine has been awarding this prize to 100 most technologically significant new products available for sale or licensing in the year preceding the judgment. We use USPTO patent data to measure the relevant dimensions of the technological regime prevailing in each sector and, on this basis, we provide a characterization of each sector in terms of the Schumpeter Mark I/Schumpeter Mark II archetypes. Our main finding is that breakthrough inventions are more likely to emerge in ‘turbulent’ Schumpeter Mark I type of contexts.