The determinants of university–industry collaboration in food science in Italy

Firms’ collaboration with academic institutions expands their range of expertise and can support the development of business innovations in several industries. For technological as well as structural reasons, university–industry collaborations are especially important in the case of the food industry. This paper aims at assessing the drivers of knowledge transfer from academic departments to industry. We analyse the dynamics of private funding of university research activities and investigate the drivers of university knowledge transfer from food science university departments, identifying how they differ from drivers in other areas of science. The empirical investigation is based on the econometric analysis of financial data on the whole population of university departments in Italy. We provide some implications for policy, highlighting whether and how university food science departments differ from university departments engaged in other areas of science, and how their interactions with industry can be increased.     

Modelling Intra-Group Relationships

Within a group of companies, a model is given for management of the relationships between the parent company and its subsidiaries. This is particularly relevant for groups originating from mergers and takeovers, because firms acquired often differ substantially in organizational structure from each other and from the parent company. The model provides a means of harmonizing the organizational structures of parent company and subsidiaries, so as to provide a complete coverage of necessary activities without duplication, and a means of identifying which activities should, in economic terms, be centralized by the parent company, and which should be delegated to the subsidiary. Finally, there is an empirical application of the model to one of the principal Italian banking groups.     

Getting Started with PATSTAT Register

This article provides a technical introduction to the PATSTAT Register database, which contains bibliographical, procedural and legal status data on patent applications handled by the European Patent Office. It presents eight MySQL queries that cover some of the most relevant aspects of the database for research purposes. It targets academic researchers and practitioners who are familiar with the PATSTAT database and the MySQL language.     

Pricing discretely monitored Asian options under Lévy processes

We present methodologies to price discretely monitored Asian options when the underlying evolves according to a generic Lévy process. For geometric Asian options we provide closed-form solutions in terms of the Fourier transform and we study in particular these formulas in the Lévy-stable case. For arithmetic Asian options we solve the valuation problem by recursive integration and derive a recursive theoretical formula for the moments to check the accuracy of the results. We compare the implementation of our method to Monte Carlo simulation implemented with control variates and using different parametric Lévy processes. We also discuss model risk issues.     

Approximate pricing of swaptions in affine and quadratic models

This paper proposes new bounds on the prices of European-style swaptions for affine and quadratic interest rate models. These bounds are computable whenever the joint characteristic function of the state variables is known. In particular, our lower bound involves the computation of a one-dimensional Fourier transform independently of the swap length. In addition, we control the error of our method by providing a new upper bound on swaption price that is applicable to all considered models. We test our bounds on different affine models and on a quadratic Gaussian model. We also apply our procedure to the multiple curve framework. The bounds are found to be accurate and computationally efficient.     

Logistics and supply chain management in luxury fashion retail: Empirical investigation of Italian firms

The Italian industry of fashion goods is a business worth 67.6€ billion in 2006 (Il Sole 24ore, January 10, 2007), of which about 26€ billion is due to the luxury segment. Marketing gurus state that “consumers everywhere at every income level want more luxury” [Danziger, P.N., 2005. Let them Eat the Cake: Marketing Luxury to the Masses as well as the Classes. Dearborn Trade Publishing, Chicago]: therefore, companies should move brands towards a higher positioning and add more valuable features to products and services, but this cannot be obtained only by means of marketing efforts. Which is the role of operations and supply chain management in luxury fashion companies’ success? This paper presents the results of the exploratory stage of a research project ongoing at Politecnico di Milano and dealing with supply chain management in the luxury fashion industry. In total, 12 Italian luxury fashion retailers have been studied in order to describe the main features of operations and supply chain strategies in the luxury fashion segment and to identify their role with respect to the relevant critical success factors.     

Regional Differentiation and Farm Exit: A Hierarchical Model for Tuscany

We analyse the exit behaviour of Tuscan farms during the period 2000–2007 both at the farm and the territorial level. The study combines data from the 2000 National Census of Agriculture and three waves of the ‘Farm Structure Surveys’. The exit probability of the resulting sample, composed of 3,187 farms, is estimated through a Bayesian hierarchical probit model. Our results show that exits reflect the size and type of holdings. Likelihood of exit is higher in areas of higher population density that are not classified as ‘urban’ areas.     

The Black–Scholes model as a determinant of the implied volatility smile: A simulation study

The paper represents an initial effort to shed light on the determinants of the implied volatility smile in financial (derivative) markets. It fully details the implications of the institutionalization of the Black–Scholes model in an uncertain world populated by individuals who are bounded by the amount of calculation or accounting which is technically possible. Combining model simulations, empirical analysis, and mathematical derivations, the paper proposes that the determinants of the volatility smile might be related to the behavior of traders. In pricing options, they use the widely accepted Black–Scholes formula with a measure of stock volatility that they derive from their subjective beliefs. Moreover, heterogeneity of traders’ beliefs and the way traders update their expectations have nontrivial effects, both on equilibrium prices and on the emergence of the implied volatility smile.     

Is inequality the price to pay for higher growth in middle-income countries?

An evolutionary two-sector model is used to study the impact of skill-biased technological change on the growth and inequality paths of a middle-income developing economy. We present four scenarios resulting from changes in a country’s structural conditions and the characteristics of the shock. We show that wage inequality is neither a necessary nor a sufficient condition for growth. A Kuznets dynamic may emerge in the long run in the case of successful catching-up to the high-growth steady state. However, this only happens if adjustment costs significantly hamper the process of skill upgrade. The business cycle and the process of structural change may give rise to sizeable rises in wage inequality in the short term, even when the economy does not break out from the low-growth steady state.