Exploring the relationship between university and innovation: evidence from the Italian food industry

This study provides empirical evidence on the role of universities’ technological transfer (TT) activities in the Italian manufacturing sector, with particular attention to the food industry. Using the UniCredit-Capitalia database (2008 UniCredit-Capitalia. 2008. Decima Indagine Sulle Imprese Manifatturiere Italiane. Rapporto Corporate. [Google Scholar]) for firms and data from the Ministry of Education, University and Research (MIUR) to obtain the university TT indicator, we estimate a probit model to assess the effect of universities’ TT activities on a firm’s likelihood to innovate. The role of proximity in knowledge spillovers from TT activities is also investigated. Results show that university TT activities seem to stimulate food industry firms innovation and the impact appears significantly higher than for the manufacturing sector. Moreover, the effect of TT activities on innovation appears to be geographically bounded. As regards policy implications, this study provides two insights which may help promote innovation in the food sector. First, the factors that influence innovative capability in the food sector are different from those in other sectors, suggesting the need for sector specific instruments for promoting innovation. Second, science is important in the food industry and this raises questions about the policy of mainly considering high-tech industries when promoting a closer relationship between firms and universities.     

Firm size,sectors and countries as sources of variety in innovation

This paper aims at providing a comprehensive empirical appraisal of the nature, extent and sources of variety in innovation in industry across Europe. The results presented in the empirical section of this paper are based on a unique database (SIEPI) containing data drawn by the second Community Innovation Survey (CIS2) for 10 countries, 22 manufacturing sectors and three firm-size classes. This database has allowed us to look beyond the sectoral aggregate statistics provided by Eurostat and explore in detail the differences in innovation processes both within and across European countries and manufacturing industries. Further, the SIEPI database has been used to identify the determinants of the variety in innovation across Europe. In particular, the analysis focuses on the relative importance of sector-specific, context-specific and firm-size factors in driving firms’ innovative behaviours and performances.     

Volatility, trade size, and order imbalance in China and Japan exchange traded funds

In recent years there have been reports of excessive price volatility and value differences between prices of exchange traded funds (ETFs) and their underlying asset values. The objective of our study is to shed light on these facts by taking a closer look at the relationship between return volatility, trade size, and order imbalance for international ETFs. Even after controlling for order imbalance, volume as represented by number of trades in one of five trade size categories continues to have a significant and predominantly positive impact on volatility. Both trade size and order imbalance are important determinants of the Japan and China ETFs’ price volatility.     

The emergence of Italy as a fashion country: Nation branding and collective meaning creation at Florence’s fashion shows (1951–1965)

Abstract

We analyse the emergence of Italy as a fashion country with a reconstruction of the history and impact of the collective fashion shows that Giovanni Battista Giorgini organised in Florence in 1951–1965. Our cultural analysis highlights the role events play in the mobilisation of local actors and the creation of nation brands, which we conceive as ongoing narrations built on a country’s material and symbolic resources that differentiate its image in valuable ways for export markets. Despite their decline, the Florentine shows created an intangible asset that facilitated the ascent of Milan as Italy’s fashion capital in the 1970s.     

How Chinese Agricultural Immigrants Affect Farmers in the Russian Far East

China’s international position as a net creditor nation provides it with foreign exchange that it has invested in Asian and African countries. One example is China's investment in the Russian Far East (RFE). Thousands of Chinese agricultural workers have migrated to the RFE in recent decades. They are often welcomed by Russian farmers who face a labor shortage and by local residents who can buy cheap vegetables from them, but there are others who resent their presence in the region as competitors. Our study is the first empirical study of this relationship. Our results demonstrate economic benefits to the Russian households. There are, however, some negative repercussions of Chinese farmers in the RFE, and the governments of both China and Russia need to manage the situation wisely.     

Risk measures with the CxLS property

In the present contribution, we characterise law determined convex risk measures that have convex level sets at the level of distributions. By relaxing the assumptions in Weber (Math. Finance 16:419–441, 2006), we show that these risk measures can be identified with a class of generalised shortfall risk measures. As a direct consequence, we are able to extend the results in Ziegel (Math. Finance, 2014, http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/mafi.12080/abstract) and Bellini and Bignozzi (Quant. Finance 15:725–733, 2014) on convex elicitable risk measures and confirm that expectiles are the only elicitable coherent risk measures. Further, we provide a simple characterisation of robustness for convex risk measures in terms of a weak notion of mixture continuity.     

Leisure,Stress, and Coping: The Sport Participation of Collegiate Student-Athletes

Research has indicated that there is a relationship between stress and participation in leisure (Caltabiano, 1995; Chalip, Thomas, & Voyle, 1992; Reich & Zautra, 1981; Strauss-Blasche, Ekmekcioglu, & Marktl, 2002; Warner-Smith & Brown, 2002; Wheeler & Frank, 1988). It has been suggested that leisure buffers or mediates stress, thereby enhancing individual health and well-being, because of the self-determination and social support that are experienced in leisure (Coleman & Iso-Ahola, 1993). However, a number of issues have been raised by the recent research, including whether or not the leisure, stress, and health relationship varies by type of leisure activity (Iwasaki & Mannell, 2000), exactly why and how leisure (or any given leisure activity) interacts with stress (Iwasaki & Mannell, 1999-2000; Kleiber, Hutchinson, & Williams, 2002), and the possibility that leisure itself could be a stressor (Iwasaki & Mannell, 2000; Iwasaki & Smale, 1998). The interpretive study reported here examined a particular leisure activity--collegiate sport--and individuals' experiences of stress because of their participation in this type of leisure. Results indicate that collegiate sport is perceived to be both a buffer and experience of stress. Results also reveal that race and gender are important in shaping collegiate athletes' experiences of stress. Support was found for the ideas that (a) stress is a transactional process (Lazarus, 1998) and (b) research approaches that allow the dynamic experience and contextualization of the personal meanings of stress and leisure to emerge are needed (Iwasaki & Smale, 1998; Kleiber et al., 2002).     

Linking service level, inventory management and warehousing practices: A case-based managerial analysis

This paper aims to understand how best performing companies strive to improve their service levels, under the assumption that not only inventory management, but also warehouse management plays a key role in achieving this goal. To explore this issue, a case-based analysis was conducted on six companies from the food distribution and pharmaceutical industries. The empirical analysis shows that this assumption holds when the companies deal with a very high number of SKUs; they need to properly manage warehousing processes to guarantee fast, complete and correct deliveries to customers. This results in the adoption of best practices and in relevant investments in technology and equipment peculiar to warehousing. This empirical analysis also shows that, to further improve the accuracy and the speed of the picking and shipping processes, the companies tend to automate their activities, but only when the level of order fragmentation is low and the degree of morphological homogeneity is high.     

The Competitive Mezzogiorno (Southern Italy): Some Evidence from the Clothing and Textile Industry in San Giuseppe Vesuviano

The distinction between ‘the three Italies’– the northern industrial triangle, the underdeveloped Mezzogiorno and the industrial districts of the north east – was first made ten years ago. This distinction aimed to legitimize the existence of regional situations that had previously been ignored. After some years of investigating the southern economy, we need to revisit the analysis of ‘the second Italy’, since it has complex features requiring detailed study. Recent research has revealed the existence of partially underground local systems in the Italian Mezzogiorno, which are not captured by traditional statistical data and display different kinds of linkages. The clothing and textile industry in San Giuseppe Vesuviano is one example of a competitive local production system. Commercial and production enterprises, homeworkers and workshops make up this local fabric. This article focuses on certain aspects of this situation, which have developed spontaneously: regulation mechanisms of informal work, competition and cooperation within the system, the attraction of an immigrant labour force (the Chinese community), evolutionary trends, the low level of criminality and the role of institutions. La distinction établie entre ‘les trois Italie’ le triangle industriel du nord, le Mezzogiorno sous développé et les districts industriels du nord‐est – date d'une décennie. Elle visait à légitimer l'existence de situations régionales jusqu' alors ignorées. Après quelques années d'enquètes sur l'économie méridionale, il convient de revisiter l'analyse de ‘la deuxième Italie’, ses caractéristiques complexes nécessitant des précisions. De récentes recherches ont révélé l'existence, dans le Mezzogiorno italien, de systèmes locaux en partie souterrains, échappant aux statistiques traditionnelles et présentant différentes sortes de liens. Par exemple, l'industrie du textile et de l'habillement de San Giuseppe Vesuviano est l'un des systèmes de production locale compétitifs, où entreprises de fabrication et de commercialisation, travailleurs à domicile et ateliers constituent le tissu local. Cet article se consacre à certains aspects propres à ce cas qui s'est spontanément développé: mécanismes régulateurs du travail irrégulier, concurrence et coopération au sein du système, attraction d'une main‐d'?uvre d'immigrants (communauté chinoise), tendances prévisionnelles, faible niveau de criminalité et rôle des institutions.     

The Impact of Bilateral Investment Treaties on FDI Dynamics

This paper investigates the impact of bilateral investment treaties (BITs) on foreign direct investment (FDI) in transition countries. FDI stocks are characterised by sluggish adjustment and a dynamic pattern. This leads to biased estimates of the contemporaneous impact of BITs on FDI in static models. In our application, the contemporaneous (short‐run) impact of BITs amounts to 4.8 per cent and the long‐run effect to 8.9 per cent in the preferred model.