Boundary Spanning in Local Public Service Partnerships: Coaches,advocates or enforcers?

This paper analyses the role of senior civil servants who work directly with local public service partnerships in the UK. It finds that their activities are welcomed by local actors and can have a positive impact on partnership working. They add value by acting as coaches who bring new ideas and help to build trust among local agencies and as advocates through being an important channel of communication between partnerships and national government. However, they struggle to facilitate more joined up working among national government departments whose differentiated regulatory and funding procedures impede attempts to collaborate at a local level.     

Strategic Interactions Among Central Bank and National Fiscal Authorities in a Monetary Union Subject to Asymmetric Country Shocks

In this paper we extend Nordhaus’ (Brookings Pap Econ Act (2):139–199, 1994) results to an environment which may represent the current European situation, characterised by a single monetary authority and several fiscal bodies. We show that, even assuming that the monetary and the fiscal authorities share the same ideal targets, in the presence of asymmetric shocks the “symbiosis” result found by Dixit and Lambertini (J Int Econ 60:235–247, 2003) no longer obtains. Thus, fiscal rules as those envisaged in the Maastricht Treaty and in the Stability and Growth Pact may work as monetary/fiscal coordination devices that improve welfare. The imposition of common targets, however, may work as a substitute for policy coordination only if these are made state contingent, an aspect that the recent version of the Stability and Growth Pact takes into account in a more appropriate way than its original version.

How Much Does Wind Power Reduce $$\text {CO}_{2}$$ Emissions? Evidence from the Irish Single Electricity Market

This paper evaluates the effect of wind generation on \(\text {CO}_{2}\) emissions using 2008–2012 historical data for the Irish Single Electricity Market. Wind generation displaces \(\text {CO}_{2}\) emissions, as expected, in line with the average system emissions. Over the whole period, wind generation avoided about 8.8 million tons of \(\text {CO}_{2}\), equivalent to about 12% of total system emissions. To understand what drives the level of abatement we evaluate the results by technology and determine that wind generation has similar effects on total emissions from CCGT and coal plants, due to the higher carbon content of coal. Each MWh of wind, however, replaces more generation from CCGTs than from coal plants, in proportion to their generation. We also test the hypothesis that as wind displaces baseload plants it pushes them to generate less efficiently, but find no evidence of a strong negative effect of wind on CCGT or coal plant efficiency. Finally wind displaces about 2.5% fewer emissions when the pumped storage plant is on outage, suggesting that wind is more effective when paired with a flexible system.     

Environment, human development and economic growth

Over the last few years, environmental issues have entered into policy design, particularly development and growth policies. Natural resources are considered necessary production inputs and environmental quality is considered a welfare determinant. The integration of environmental issues into economic growth and development theories and empirics is currently widely analyzed in the literature. The effects of natural resources endowment on economic growth are mainly analyzed through the so-called Resource Curse Hypothesis (RCH) whereas the effects of economic growth on environmental quality are part of the Environmental Kuznets Curve (EKC). Furthermore, recent contributions on RCH and EKC have shown the important role of institutions and human development dimensions in building a sustainable development path. In this paper, we attempt to analyze the causal relationships between economic growth, human development and sustainability combining the RCH and EKC models and adopting a human development perspective. Results confirm the importance of high institutional quality and investments for human capital accumulation in order to build a sustainable development path.     

Fundamental ratios as predictors of ESG scores: a machine learning approach

Decisions in Economics and Finance - Sustainable and responsible finance incorporates Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) principles into business decisions and investment strategies. In...     

Firms’ linkages with public research organisations in Argentina: Drivers, perceptions and behaviours

This paper analyses firms’ drivers for linking to public research organisations (PRO) (first goal) and compares perceptions and behaviours of linked vs. unlinked firms (second goal). We used an original firm database constructed from a representative survey with information for linked and unlinked firms for year 2005 in Argentina. Drivers were estimated using a Probit model, while differences in perceptions and behaviours between linked and unlinked firms were assessed with propensity score matching techniques. For our first goal we found that (i) firms’ knowledge bases were not drivers for linking to PRO and (ii) networking capabilities matter but there is a substitution effect between interacting with PRO and interacting with other economic agents in the market when firms aim at exchanging information rather than doing joint research. These findings may imply that current linkages are not exploiting properly their knowledge potential; it may be worth designing a division of labour among PRO in their functions in PRO-industry interactions. For our second goal: we found that (i) linked firms invest more in innovative activities; (ii) they are more prone to patenting; (iii) both groups of firms value similarly PRO research outputs available at arm length (i.e. without direct linking). Given the asymmetric development on appropriability tools between PRO and firms and the fact that all firms benefit from PRO research outputs, the higher predisposition of linked firms towards patenting, suggests that special attention should be placed at analysing the risks of a private appropriation of publicly created knowledge.     

The impact of thin‐capitalization rules on the location of multinational firms’ foreign affiliates

This paper examines how restrictions on the tax deductibility of interest cost affect location choices of multinational corporations (MNCs). Many countries have introduced so‐called thin‐capitalization rules (TCRs) to prevent MNCs from shifting their tax base to countries with lower tax rates. As of 2012, in our sample of 172 countries, 61 countries have implemented a TCR. Using information on nearly all new foreign investments of German MNCs, we provide a number of new and interesting insights in how TCRs affect the decision of where to locate foreign entities. In particular, stricter TCRs are found to negatively affect location choices of MNCs. Our results include estimates of own‐ and cross‐elasticities of location choice and also novel results on the relative importance of tax base vs. tax rate effects. We finally provide estimates for different uncoordinated as well as coordinated policy scenarios.     

Technology and jobs

The article investigates the employment effects of technology. A set of models is developed where changes in industry-level employment are explained by changes in demand, wages, by the diffusion of innovation and its market impact. The empirical test uses data from two EU innovation surveys – CIS (Community Innovation Survey) 2 (1994–1996) and CIS 3 (1998–2000) – on 10 industrial sectors and 10 European countries. The results of the models show the importance to discriminate between different strategies for innovation, between high- and low-innovation industries, and between short-term labour market effects and the long-term impact of structural change.