Remittances,financial development,and growth

Despite the increasing importance of remittances in total international capital flows, the relationship between remittances and growth has not been adequately studied. This paper studies one of the links between remittances and growth, in particular how local financial sector development influences a country's capacity to take advantage of remittances. Using a newly-constructed dataset for remittances covering about 100 developing countries, we find that remittances boost growth in countries with less developed financial systems by providing an alternative way to finance investment and helping overcome liquidity constraints. This finding controls for the endogeneity of remittances and financial development, does not depend on the particular measure of financial sector development used, and is robust to a number of robustness tests, including threshold estimation. We also provide evidence that there could be an investment channel trough which remittances can promote growth especially when the financial sector does not meet the credit needs of the population.     

Which factors are perceived as obstacles for the growth of Italian academic spin-offs?

During the last decades, academic spin-offs have received increasing attention from both researchers and practitioners, mainly due to their ability to advance industrial application of scientific knowledge. In the past, scholars believed that these organisations were subjected to fast growth after their establishment. Only in the last decade, scholars realise that the fast-growing perspective hypothesised was an oversimplification, as the majority of high-tech academic spin-offs growth slowly or remain small in size for long time. The aim of our study is to investigate the reasons that inhibit the growth of established academic spin-offs, focusing on the Italian context. Through the implementation of the Delphi technique and of the fuzzy logic we derive new and relevant results, for scholars, spin-offs’ managers and policy-makers.     

Supporting decision-making for recycling-based investments

The increasing demand for environmentally friendly products and the introduction of tougher environmental laws have encouraged firms to consider the adoption of recycling issues as one of the most effective solutions for reducing their impact on the environment. Unfortunately, many companies delegate decision-making on recycling issues at an operational level. This attitude presents some problems as it could lead companies to neglect many effects resulting from the adoption of recycling-based investments. The objective of this paper is to suggest a conceptual model aimed at supporting managers in the integration of recycling issues into the overall process of strategy formation; in particular, the designed approach is divided into two main phases: the identification of the main recycling-based programmes and the definition of a framework, based on both physical and accounting measures, aimed at assessing the effectiveness of different recycling initiatives according to the main priorities of the decision-maker.